PDF is great for storing documents, but sometimes you may want to analyze the data stored in a PDF, then it is a good idea to convert your PDF files to Excel for better analysis
(Free) Method 1: Convert PDF To Excel Using Online Services
There are a few free online services that allow you to convert PDF files. However, please keep in mind that those services may be compromised. You do not want to use those services to convert sensitive data like bank statements or similar.
Here are a few services that you can use to convert non-sensitive / non-essential data:
Status: Online – 16 August 2014, Please add comment when done
(Free) Method 2: Convert PDF By Hand To Excel / Using InkScape To SVG
If you don’t mind spending a few minutes on this, open the PDF with a PDF reader such as Foxit PDF Reader
1. Step Double-click into the PDF file until you get a type cursor:
2. Step Now it is important to select everything on the page. Hold down the left mouse button and drag it to the right corner to select it all
3. Step Open Excel and copy it into the Excel file
4. Step You may notice that Excel is not able to correctly paste it into different cells
5. Step You now have to either edit it manually or copy everything into a notepad++ editor and perform some replace commands
6. Step Optional: Within notepad++ search for patterns. If all rows start with “Amazon” e.g. a list of orders from Amazon, then search for Amazon and replace it with ;Amazon – the semicolon will serve as a separator (called Delimiter) that allows Excel to import the data into the correct cells.
For this to work you need to tell Excel to open the sheet with semicolon as the delimiter!
Convert PDF To SVG
Optional step: Sometimes you may want to convert PDF not to Excel but be able to draw into it. Then I suggest downloading InkScape
(Paid) Method 3: Convert PDF to Excel For 20 Bucks
As a small business owner you may have the budget to buy software from time to time. A very inexpensive solution to your problem comes from a company called WonderShare
This is the most popular PDF to Excel converter. You can download a free trial to convert a single page PDF from:
http://www.wondershare.com/pdf-converter/pdf-to-excel-converter
Once downloaded you can convert only 1 page. You need to register to convert PDFs with 2 or more pages
The software is very easy to use and you can even drag files into the GUI, although it did not work during my tests. However, the conversion process is flawless. This is by far the most reliable PDF converter I found, so I can still give this a 100% recommendation. I have personally used this software to convert over 50 PDF files to Excel files for tax purposes and similar things.
