Expert: Ken Black - 7/23/2009

Question
Deal Ken,   
I have a question on conversion pdf file to excel or other editable forma, because I need to edit the data contents in PDF file again.The pdf file was sent by somebody else, I don't know the original form and am unable to get the original document. I have adobe acrobat professional 7.0, is it possible to convert the pdf file (6-7 pages with table and formatted layout) to excel or other editable form (remaining the layout setting)?   Many thanks    Esther

Answer
Hi Esther,

You could try saving the pdf in xml, text or the rich text format and importing that into Excel. I do not know how well this will work in terms of retaining the layout and formatting, but it is worth the try.

Also check out

www.planetpdf.com

They offer software such as NitroPDF which will allow you to edit pdf files. They also have a pdf to excel converter, although I am not familiar with how well they work.

Another excellent pdf editor is a plug in for Acrobat called Pitstop from Enfocus software, but it is a bit on the higher end cost-wise.

The editability of any pdf depends heavily on how it was created. If your pdf was created as a rasterized image, which does not preserve vector art and text, then there may not be anything you can do easily to edit the file. So long as the text remains text and any vector objects remain as shapes you should be ok.

Thanks,

Ken Black