How to Convert an Adobe Reader File to an Excel File

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You can easily convert an Adobe Reader file to an Excel file.

Adobe Reader is a popular portable document format (PDF) reading program from Adobe Systems. PDF files are created from source material that is converted into a format that is viewable without the program with which the file was created. Reader can convert PDF data into a format that is usable in other programs, such as Excel.

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Step 1

Launch Adobe Reader and open the PDF file that you want to convert to an Excel file. Reader is available for free from the Adobe website (see Resources section). Click once on the "File" menu and once on "Open." Use the "Look in" menu on the "Open" dialogue box to open the folder in which the PDF file is located. Double-click on the PDF file name to open it in Reader.

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Step 2

Click once on the "File" menu and select the "Save as Text" option to launch a "Save As" window. Use the "Save in" menu to open a folder in which to save the text file. Type a name for the text file into the "File name" field and click once on the "Save" button.

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Step 3

Launch Microsoft Excel. If you do not have Excel, you may download a free trial as part of Office from the Microsoft web site (see Resources section). Click once on the "Data" tab and once on the "From Text" button on the "Get External Data" section. Locate the folder in which you saved the text file from Step 2 using the menu in the address bar. Highlight the file and click once on the "Import" button.

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Step 4

Use the "Text Import Wizard" to import the data from the PDF file into Excel. Select the "Delimited" option and click once on the "Next" button. Select the appropriate delimiter based on the type of data that was in the PDF file and click once on the "Next" button. Select a data format, also based on the data that was in the PDF file and click once on the "Next" button. The data from the PDF file will now be populated in the Excel file.

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