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Participant
February 11, 2016
Question

Problem exporting portions of pdf table with blue highlighting into excel

  • February 11, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 443 views

I just downloaded the trial of Acrobat DC pro.  I want to export the table portions of a PDF into excel.  The document is Hulbert Financial Digest semi-annual report on the performance of financial newsletters.  http://www.marketwatch.com/topics/columns/hulbert-financial-digest. It requires a subscription to see the actual files.  He highlights any performance numbers that are better than the Wilshire 5000 total return index.  My problem is that any highlighted values do not convert correctly in Excel.  If the Highlighted number is 12.8,  it will show up in the excel cell as 1122..88.  I have noticed if I use the select tool in Acrobat to copy the number into notepad, I get the same result. I have snipped a portion of one line out of the   PDF so you can see the problem.  The -7.6 and 7.7 and the text come across correctly into the appropriate excel cells.

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1 reply

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 11, 2016

It probably means that they way they are highlighting the numbers is by overlaying the same number on top of the original, with a blue background.

There's nothing you can do about this, except for asking them to fix the way they generate these files.

kistonewaAuthor
Participant
February 11, 2016

If that were the case, why would it not be 12.812.8 instead of each character repeated twice?

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 11, 2016

Because the characters are overlapping.

The order is x-based, not z-based.