Convert PDF with lined tables into spreadsheet

OmniPage did a poor job converting this list of Bernie Madoff's customers with the software's default setting. But because the document was so uniform, quickly defining and applying a template resulted in a spreadsheet that looked identical to the original PDF.

The consistent formatting of this listing of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff's customers made converting the document into a sortable spreadsheet an easy task for Monarch.

Conversion of this simple table of Bernie Madoff's customers is quick, easy and accurate with Able2Extract. Column alignment is perfect and the text conversion is perfect as well.

PDF2XL OCR had no trouble with this document, a simple lined table of Bernie Madoff's customers and their addresses. Using the program's auto-detect feature, the 163-page document took only seconds to convert.

It takes less than a minute for Adobe Acrobat to transform this lined PDF table of Bernie Madoff's customers into an almost perfect spreadsheet reproduction. The resulting Excel file is clean and complete, requiring a little effort before journalists can dive into the data.

Pdftotext easily converts this list of former Madoff customers into a text file optimized for fixed width delimiting in Excel. The program's -layout command, which creates an output file identical in format to the original, is key to this result.

Cometdocs did a good job converting this simple, lined table into a sortable spreadsheet requiring minimal cleanup. Nothing standout here, but certainly fast and easy if you're looking for something quick.

Even though Zamzar did a decent job converting the data in this 163-page file of Bernie Madoff's customers into spreadsheet format, the entries were spread across 163 separate sheets.

Although it captures the data and formats it perfectly, Nitro splits this table of Bernie Madoff's customers over more than 100 pages. That kind of cleanup means a lot of work or a little programming knowledge.