Free and Fast Way to Accurately Convert PDFs to Excel Files

Anyone working with tabular data on a regular basis knows that Microsoft Excel is the preferred program for manipulating this type of material for most people. The Excel spreadsheet is an industry standard when it comes to presenting numbers or statistics and working with them. And while Excel is the most popular program for using this type of material, you might not always receive this data from others in the Excel format.

It’s not uncommon for people to convert tabular data to PDF before sending it to others. PDF is not only easily compressed into a small file size and, therefore, easy to send and transfer, but it is also a universal file format that appears identically on every platform. But with all of these advantages of the PDF, it has one fairly big disadvantage – it’s hard to edit.

So if this does occur to you on a regular basis and you need to convert your PDFs into Excel, thankfully, there are ways to do so effectively and cost free.

PDFtoExcel.org is one tool that enables users to quickly turn their PDFs into Excel files, without losing any of the formatting and structure of the PDF document.

For a free tool, it’s incredibly accurate with its conversions, and it’s also very easy to use.

To use the tool, click Browse to find the PDF file on your computer that you want to have converted. 

Now simply enter your email and click Send – that’s it!

In a matter of minutes, your converted Excel file will be ready. An email with a link to your downloadable Excel file will be sent to the address that you specified.

The accuracy of the service is what really sets it apart from many other free services. When converting from PDF to Excel, it’s important to get accurate conversions so that the formatting of the cells and rows is preserved. This saves you a lot of time that you could potentially have to waste on editing the converted file further before being able to use it.

The tool is not only incredibly accurate in its conversions, but it’s also very secure and safe to use. Your email address and files will be deleted from the server permanently 24 hours after the conversion has been completed.

For anyone looking for a free and fast way to accurately convert PDFs to Excel files, PDFtoExcel.org is definitely one of the best online tools available for this purpose.

This guest post was written by the nice folks at PDFtoExcel.org. Do check out their tool and let me know if it worked for you in the comments below.

Excel: Copy and paste the actual number rather than the formula

1. CTRL + C (to copy the number)

2. Move to the cell you wish to copy it to.

3. ALT+E, then S

4. Select 'Values' and click 'OK'

Select rows in excel based on criteria without FIND and nasty #VALUE errors

So I want to get rid of all fields in an Excel spreadsheet that contain the value "{". The way I would think to do something like this in any programming language would be to use an 'instr' type of function and delete records accordingly.

The problem with Excel is that you need to use a function like FIND. The problem with FIND is that it returns that nasty "#VALUE" if there is no such field.

I came across this solution on the _interwebs_ that is pretty nifty. The way it works is to get the length of a string where you have replaced (or substituted) the character "{" and compare that with a string that has not been replaced. If the string lengths are different, then boom... you can show/not show that field. I approve of this!

Here's an example:

=IF(LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D5,"{",""))=LEN(D5),D5,"")


Enjoy.

ActiveX component can't create object: 'Excel.Application'

ActiveX component can't create object: 'Excel.Application'

This is a tricky one, which can be solved if the following three things are configured:

1. Make sure that Excel is installed on your server

It is needed for the license.

2. Make sure the permissions are set correctly for the Excel application. This thread explains how:

http://forums.devarticles.com/microsoft-access-development-49/permission-denied-when-access-excel-obj-5801.html

3. Make sure that unsigned ActiveX controls are not blocked by your browser:

In Internet Explorer. Go to, Tools -> Internet Options

Click on the 'Security' tab

Then seek the following:


'Download unsigned ActiveX controls'
- Set to 'Prompt'


Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe
- Set to 'Prompt'