When working to convert PDF data into Excel, you can be swamped with the repetitive task of converting the same data everyday.
For handling large groups of PDFs, there’s the batch conversion feature in Able2Extract. Yet, this option is only ideal for full and automatic conversions.
What about multiple PDF to Excel conversions that need a bit of customization or scanned PDFs that can’t be converted in batch mode, but have the same layout per page?
Web browsers have come a long way. There was a time when finally being able to view a PDF natively inside Firefox or Chrome got everyone excited. Now, viewing PDFs is the most basic PDF task you can perform.
Aside from viewing PDFs in your browser, you now know more than a handful of PDF tasks you can accomplish online. But we’ll bet that there are still a few PDF web tricks you didn’t know about. Here are 5 you probably didn’t know about.
Because you know that PDFs are hard to edit, it’s natural that you wouldn’t peg the format as one you could translate into different languages. However, it is possible to do so without converting your file and manually translating it word for word with Google Translate.
The online translator is a popular tool for anyone who needs a quick reference. But in case you didn’t notice, it also has an option where you can upload a document to be translated–PDFs included! Obviously, just as the translations for manual text entries may not be 100%, the translations for documents can be slightly inaccurate, as well. So use this tool with that caveat in mind.
You’re strapped for time. You need to make some final analysis on tabular data. You need to prep approved images for publication. You need to make some tweaks to a presentation you’re giving in a few hours. Any of these sound familiar? These scenarios are all too common, and in each case, a PDF file can be involved, making that single PDF task even tougher.
In cases like these, online conversion tools can be a lifesaver. We know the constraints of time, money and resources. That’s why we’ve made it easy for you to get that PDF to JPEG, PDF to Excel and PDF to PowerPoint conversion done. No installation needed. No registration required. Just upload your file, enter your email and click on Convert. Your file will be emailed to you, free of charge.
Anyone who needs to review, research or do some reading can especially hate the task if it involves doing so with a PDF document and a busy schedule. Not only does it mean having to read a screen, but, if you’re on the go, it also means having to do it on a mobile device. Something a bit cumbersome for a 5-7 inch gadget. And that’s why SpokenText makes this list.
This tool is an online text to audio converter that comes with the ability to convert text in documents to audio files (.mp3, .m4b) you can take with you. You literally turn your reading task into a listening one. It can convert Word documents, plain text files and PDF documents, just to name a few. This online tool has paid and trial accounts with a few customizable features that makes it worth checking out.
Reading lengthy PDF files in Chrome is common and it can be pretty frustrating at times. You close your PDF, lose your page and then open the file later on, only to scroll through the entire PDF to find the one place where you left off.
The Chrome extension, Additor allows you to quickly bookmark the PDF you’re reading.
Signing PDFs is one of those tasks that you don’t want to do. It sounds tedious and difficult. So it may surprise you that it can accomplished online and with Chrome, no less. Of course, this capability is done through a Chrome extension: HelloSign.
HelloSign will let you add form fields and signatures to PDFs that are uploaded to Google Drive. Signed documents come with an audit trail to keep track of them, email notifications to all parties, and the ability to share the signed form. Read our tutorial on how to sign PDF documents. We feature a step by step look at how to use this extension to add a signature to your PDF documents.
With just a few of these tips, you can further enhance how you work with PDF files online. Give them a try and let us know how they work out for you.
There is a general sense of helplessness when it comes to analyzing public data, especially as people think it involves insane amounts of statistical mastery and in-depth knowledge of complicated statistical software.
This is especially nerve wracking for data journalists, who are keen on using data to write stories that can actually influence a certain aspect of our society, such as healthcare or education. Truth be told, analyzing data and storytelling actually go hand in hand.
Since the Open Data initiative started, more and more data sets have seen the light of the day on various data-related portals. The most interesting data sets for journalists are the ones who are publicly available, simply because they are free to use and analyze. Those data sets are available on a variety of online sources, such as: www.data.gov, open.canada.ca, data.gov.uk and many more.
Open data portals contain thousands and thousands of data sets, related to various branches of government: education, business, economy, crime, justice, healthcare and more.
Once you start exploring the online data, you will see that it usually comes in 3 main formats: HTML, XML and PDF.
However, if you start investigating the data sets in more depth, you will quickly notice that there is only one format that’s present in almost every data set — the PDF. So, the logic goes that if you know how to analyze data that’s locked inside a PDF, you’ll know how to analyze any.
But what makes people want to store data in a non editable format?
First of all, when you save a data set as a PDF you are reducing its size, so it’s easier to store and upload to online databases. Secondly, since the PDF is not editable by default, you are making sure that no one tampers with your data and changes any of the ever-so-important numerical values. Remember, people spend countless hours gathering data and they are keen on protecting their hard work as much as possible.
So, once you find a PDF data set, where do you go next?
You now basically have only one option — you need to get that data into an Excel or CSV file format, while preserving source document accuracy as much as possible. After you do that, the next step would be to import that converted file into a data visualization tool of your choice, which we will cover later in this tutorial.
When it comes to exporting PDF data, the only tool in the market that has advanced enough PDF exporting capabilities is Able2Extract. That is because Able2Extract is not just a regular PDF converter. See, most (if not all) PDF converters on the market only convert PDF to Excel automatically, leaving you with a messy data set. The automatic conversion works good for one page invoices but converting a 1,000 page data set takes a lot more than that.
Able2Extract is the only converter that lets you fully customize your conversion by manually setting up row and column structure, prior to conversion. In addition it lets you preview the conversion results from within the software, which lets you export your data set as accurately as possible.
First, find your PDF data set. For this tutorial, we are going to use a practice data set containing all funded projects from Canadian Environmental Damages Fund. You can download it here.
Open the data set in Able2Extract and use custom PDF to Excel conversion to convert it to an Excel file. Set up row and column structure using the right side panel and make sure to check the “Preview conversion” box. Once satisfied, hit the convert button to send the data to Excel.
So, we got our data from PDF and into Excel. Great job!
The next step is to go to Excel and clean the data. This will take 15 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the data set, but the thing you are looking for in the end is to end up with data in the tabular format, which means there is a separate row for each record. It should look something like this:
Make sure you don’t have any empty rows or blank cells and that all text is formatted in the same way. If there is a row with 3 cells missing it’s best to delete the whole row because it can mess up your end result and produce inaccurate results.
Now that we have a clean and tidy data set, it’s time to give life to these numbers and visualize them. Enter data visualization.
Data visualization simply means to create interesting charts from just plain data, which makes it easier to understand and present to your readers. When it comes to visualizing data you have an option between a desktop dataviz tool and a cloud dataviz tool. We will explore one example of both.
Our recommended desktop software for visualizing complex data is Power BI. We are recommending it because of its compatibility with Excel and the fact that it’s free to use for datasets up to 1 GB. You can download it here.
Before we start with Power BI, you will need to know that analyzing data starts by asking questions and then using data to answer them. For example, you can ask questions regarding our practice data set before we even upload it to the dataviz tool:
Depending on the data set, you can ask a 1000 questions and, make no mistake, you will get a 1000 answers. OK, let’s move on to more serious stuff. Power BI.
Power BI is a Business Intelligence tool created for monitoring business performance and discovering market opportunities. Today we will use it as a data journalism tool in order to answer the two questions above.
Once you open Power BI you first click on Get Data > Excel > Connect > Your file.
Choose a sheet where data is located and press Load. Alternatively, you can press Edit if you’d like to check your data set for mistakes once again.
Once you do so, you will find a blank canvas and your data values on the right sidebar panel.
These are the values we are going to slice and dice. Let’s try to answer our first question. If you remember, we wanted to know what was the EDF funding per region.
The basic data field there is EDF Funding so we’ll drag it into the “Values” box. The canvas immediately changes and it is now showing us the total EDF funding:
Let’s now introduce another data field. Select the “Pie chart”.
Drag the “Region” field into the “Legend” box. Congrats, you made your first data visualization! We now have an overview of the funding per region and we can already start answering some questions.
However, if you pay close attention you can see that we still don’t know the exact funding for each region. To show the exact values of data fields, go to “Format” panel:
Expand the “Detail Labels” category, find the Label Style and select “Both” from the drop down menu.
Our pie chart is now showing us the specific monetary values for each segment. Great, first question answered.
OK, next up is to see which Group received the biggest funding. We’ll repeat the process but we’ll use a different chart, just to demonstrate different features of Power BI.
First, find and click on the Clustered Bar Chart.
Drag the EDF Funding into the Values box and drag the Group into the Axis box. Turn on the data labels and you’ll quickly see that the University of Waterloo received the biggest funding — almost $320,000
Now that you know how to ask questions and visualize public data, we will now quickly go over another tool that can help you visualize your data in the Cloud. Have in mind that the Cloud tools only support lower file sizes, which means you’re best off using them for 10-20 page data sets. Luckily, the data set from our example is actually pretty small.
DataHero is a cloud solution for Business Intelligence and data visualization. It allows you to connect files from numerous online and offline sources and it even has an integrated data cleaning tool, which is nice, but I do not recommend relying solely on it.
You can use DataHero for free, for files up to 2 MB in size. Anything larger than that, and you’ll probably have to pay a monthly subscription which is between $60 and $90. For this purpose, we are going to use a free plan.
Create an account, click on the Data tab and click on Import Data.
Find your Excel file, select the sheet and upload it:
On the next screen, check formatting and proceed.
What’s cool about DataHero is that it automatically suggests data visualizations:
I was originally interested in EDF Funding by project category so I’ll just create a brand new chart. DataHero uses the same drag & drop interface so it’s really easy to start using it.
First, drag the EDF Funding field onto the canvas.
Next, drag & drop the Project Category field.
As you can see, we received our answer. Most of the funding money (35%) went into Restoration projects and the rest was dispersed equally between other three categories.
There are other, more complex, data visualization tools but we will stick with DataHero and Power BI for the time being as they offer the most features in their free plans.
Let’s recap the entire process of analyzing public data that’s archived in PDF:
By now you should have a clear understanding of the entire process of analyzing public data and should be well on your way to using it to shape the future of journalism. The strategy is simple — just upload clean, high quality data and play around with it until you get what you are looking for.
Microsoft Excel can be intimidating. True. But a big pro is that it can be a life saver when wrestling with numbers and data.
Now, if you’re asking yourself when in the world would you have to deal with numbers and data, we have two words for you: March Madness.
March Madness 2016 is almost here and you can bet that everyone who doesn’t (or does) deal with data will be wading in conference standings and school stats over the next few weeks.
If you’re running a March Madness pool for your office, using MS Excel will be the best way to analyze, track and digest all the information you need to fill out your brackets and keep your pool in order.
Yet that’s only half the battle. The other half is getting that data into Excel. And this is where Able2Extact 10 can help you get everything in order.
In Excel, you can streamline and combine any existing data you want to keep as reference or update as the tournament goes on.
Player and team data will usually be available in a downloadable PDF. But what if you have a Word file? A PowerPoint presentation? No worries.
You can get your March Madness data into Excel spreadsheets regardless of the format you have. Just open your file in Able2Extract 10 and select the content you want converted (a page, line or the entire file). Then simply click on the Convert to Excel command on toolbar.
There are a lot of pain points associated with dealing with data when managing a pool—or several, one of them being the many different formats you have to consolidate and analyze. If you have differently formatted tables or statistical charts spanning pages, it can be a nightmare.
Good news is that you can tailor a PDF to Excel conversion according to the table structures in your file. Able2Extract has a few PDF to Excel conversion settings that make the job easier to identify and deal with the source document’s table structure. Select your settings before you make the conversion and you’re good to go.
You may also need specific data extractions for analyzing detailed statistics. For example, you may want to eliminate the data for lower seeded teams or scrape only the data from top teams in the last year to create your own shortlist.
For this, you can simply perform a Custom PDF to Excel conversion and filter out that information even before you even hit the Convert button. You can move rows, columns and even preview your conversion results to see if you have all the numbers you need in the right place.
Which team you root for depends just as much on the numbers as it does on a team’s dynamics. But we’re talking about 68 Division I college teams plus stats on individual players, coaches and so on. That’s a lot of data!
It, thus, may be worthwhile to have database tools for March Madness. Or, if you’re tech savvy enough, you may have a tool or script that can crunch the numbers to predict the perfect March Madness bracket.
In either case, you can get your March Madness PDF data into raw .CSV or delimited formats. Just click on the Convert to CSV command in Able2Extract. It’ll get your data working with the databases and tools you already have in place.
In some instances, you may have PDF data on teams all lumped into one single PDF with each team on one page or separate categories of data on each page.
It’s convenient for distributing and consuming the information, but hardly so if you want to separate that data. For instance, if you end up wanting to analyze each of the Final Four teams separately, you may want to organize and record each team’s information into separate worksheets.
Now, you can go into your spreadsheet and move all your data around via copy-paste. But an easier way is to uncheck the Single Worksheet option in Able2Extract’s Excel/CSV Conversion Options before you make your conversion.
This will automatically convert each PDF page into a separate worksheet, saving you the hassle of doing it manually.
No matter what type of pool your group decides to set up, knowing your stats is essential. Whether it be analyzing wins, losses and odds or keeping track of results and pool entries, Excel will be your best bet. The key is getting that data set up properly for analysis. Hopefully a few of the tips above helped!
So with March Madness just around the corner, how are you filling out your brackets this year?
In this day and age, the success of a company relies heavily on efficiency and productivity. As such, systems and services have been developed in order to cut down on waste and reduce the effort in managing workflows and document management. When reassessing the effectiveness of their workflows, companies across all industries use systems like Strength-based Lean Six Sigma.
With the level of data finance and compensation service companies handle, Strength-Based Lean and Six Sigma can work to improve the business process and records management.
What is Strength-Based Lean Six Sigma?
Strength-Based Lean Six Sigma is a system that focuses on assessing and identifying practices used within a company in order to improve it through methodical and active modifications. After best practices (and problems) are identified, steps are then taken to start restructuring the workflow according to the company’s goals and ideals. Companies are then evaluated periodically to ensure the changes made are consistently effective.
This on-going process can show business owners where there are weaknesses, bottlenecks, and wasted effort in their system. As you can imagine, workflows that handle high volumes of documents daily require such evaluation to ensure data processing keeps going smoothly, accurately, and efficiently. If not, business owners can then make adjustments accordingly in regards to both time and activity.
But working to apply that system to clientele data requires more than just a records management system. Companies like CM Global Partners specialize in applying Strength based LEAN and Six Sigma to sales compensation (Lean Sales Compensation). As a consulting company, they assist in strategically planning and creating accurate sales compensation plans for their clients.
The Only Setback In The Workflow
However, in order to create customized Lean compensation plans for companies, they need to deal with the client’s information that comes in the PDF format, a locked down file format that prevents editing of any kind.
Consequently, they would extract the data manually by retyping scanned PDFs into Excel. They had used different software in the past, but needed accuracy. In addition, they needed a way of exporting their clients’ PDF data into Excel that would work with their system, Compensation Master. Their process always required the data to be audited and identical to data in the PDF file.
“We had an industry leading service,” says David Cocks, CEO of CM Global Partners, “Now we just needed a more efficient way to extract the data.”
Creating the most effective plans possible is CM Global Partners’ priority. So the company decided to invest in Able2Extract to help speed up the data extraction process.
Using Data Extraction To Help With Strength-Based Lean Six Sigma
A case study was done to get a closer look at how and where Able2Extract fit in with their goals and workflow. Some of the benefits that resulted from their move to Able2Extract include:
Efficient workflows need efficient systems. However, as CM Global Partners knows, these systems alone aren’t enough if they can’t bridge the gap between their system and their clients’ data.
Read the full CM Global Partners case study to learn how the company successfully integrated Able2Extract with their Lean Six Sigma methodology.