Copying a PDF Table to another source

Draeconis

Draeconis

Draeconis

Associate
Joined
28 Feb 2008
Posts
185
Here's a bit of a boring one for you guys, but my Dad asked me this and it stumped me.

He wanted to copy information from a PDF, including several tables full of information, without losing the formatting, to a Word document.

Naturally his Windows machine couldn't manage it without wrecking it the formatting, so I gladly stepped in and applauded Preview's ability to infer sentence structure in a PDF and copy it properly.

However, when it came to the table, all formatting was ignored and just the raw data was copied.

Is there a way of copying the structure of a table within a PDF and pasting it into another app retaining the formatting and data?
 
Uncanny. My wife came today with a similar question, she wanted to copy a table in a PDF document into a Word document. And like you I came across the formatting anarchy that can be often associated with copy/pasting from PDF to Word documents.

So I just ended up print screening/and then copy/pasting as an image.

But if there is an answer to Dareconis's question, I too would also be interested to know the response!
 
I suggested printscreening/converting the PDF to an image, but he compiles reports that get sent to be printed, and wants it in the same format.

It's a fair enough point, I just can't figure out how to do it! Apparently, even with Adobe Acrobat, when converting a PDF to a .doc or other filetype, it messes up the table formatting!
 
I found this earlier, didn't know Word could do this! OpenOffice and Pages can do it too :)

It's not quite the ultimate convert-it-exactlyas-you-want tool, but it goes a long way!
 
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