Getting data from spreadsheets onto my computer into excel without having to type 1000+ lines?

[Sgt Brutus]

Any suggestions?

I have been working on a Mac w/ MSOffice, uploading them into a .pdf through a neat scanner. Scanning them into neat and trying to convert directly into .xcl does not get any of the data I need. PDF to excel converters have had zero success as well.

I am thinking of maybe trying it on windows 10 OS and seeing if that helps

 

[KansasSooner]

uploading them into a .pdf through a neat scanner.

Does that data reside on the internet? If so use the import external data function of Excel to link directly to it to import it. Or am I misunderstanding where the data is being uploaded from?

 

[Sgt Brutus]

Does that data reside on the internet? If so use the import external data function of Excel to link directly to it to import it. Or am I misunderstanding where the data is being uploaded from?

It's being uploaded from printed out excel sheets no accessible on any computer at the moment

 

[clemtheslowson]

It's being uploaded from printed out excel sheets no accessible on any computer at the moment

I use a program from Nuance called Nuance PDF Converter. The version I have works with Word documents, but they may have something that will work with Excel too. I bought it several years ago and it was $39.99. It came licensed for up to 3 machines. I use it here at the PD frequently. You might see if they have a product that will do what you need.

 

[KansasSooner]

PDF is a terrible format when it comes to down to it. I would look for better software (like ABBYY) that connects directly to the scanner through Excel and does the OCR bit inside of Excel. (Or if it is crappy printout scan to TIFF format first and then convert using OCR to Excel.)

 

[Gatorchip]

copy-paste the PDF with save format works. I think you need adobe pro

 

[4down20]

Have you tried open office from apache?

You should be able to edit pdf files with it and can possibly copy and paste the content. I've never done it myself, but supposedly it's a function of it.

 

[KansasSooner]

Have you tried open office from apache?

You should be able to edit pdf files with it and can possibly copy and paste the content. I've never done it myself, but supposedly it's a function of it.

You can and you can't. OpenOffice (and LibreOffice) open PDF files as a picture file in OO Draw. There are scripts to then convert it to a OO Calc file which can then be saved as an Excel file but they're only available under Linux from what I've found.

 

[KansasSooner]

@Sgt Brutus After looking at everything I honestly think your best option is to find a Windows PC with MS Office and a scanner and either OmniPage (my choice) or ABBYY and scan directly into Excel. Both OmniPage and ABBYY put a scan option on the file menu of Excel for scanning input, or the last version I used did anyway, haven't used it since XP but I'm pretty sure they still do. If nothing else both support TIFF format (better for OCR than PDF) and you can scan and save to TIFF (non-compressed) file and then use either to convert the file contents to export to Excel.