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Herbert1587
New Participant
October 31, 2021
Answered

Exporting Bank Statement from Acrobat to Excel

  • October 31, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 5054 views

Hi,

  I see there are some posts already about this issue. We shouldn't have to write a script for every different bank statement out there. I used to be a securities employee and when I switched jobs I had to move my accounts to new banks. Now that I am going through a divorce, I have statements from at least 5 different banks. Acrobat cannot reliably export these to excel. Large ads inside of the statement seems to throw it off. I would like a separate add-in or something done to address this. I think Adobe could at least create scripts or code to allow statements from the the top 10 or 15 banks in the country to flow seamlessly into Excel. That would account for the bulk of the problem. Please contact me directly if you need examples.

 

Thanks,

 

Herb 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer try67

> Acrobat cannot reliably export these to excel.

- Correct. You need to ask your bank to provide the data in Excel format. All major banks should do it.

 

> I think Adobe could at least create scripts or code to allow statements from the the top 10 or 15 banks in the country to flow seamlessly into Excel.

- Not going to happen. Adobe is not in the business of creating scripts for other businesses. You can develop such a script yourself or hire someone to do it for you, but keep in mind that any change to the format or layout of these statements will break it. Hence the need to get the raw data in this format without converting it from PDF.

2 replies

try67
try67Correct answer
Community Expert
October 31, 2021

> Acrobat cannot reliably export these to excel.

- Correct. You need to ask your bank to provide the data in Excel format. All major banks should do it.

 

> I think Adobe could at least create scripts or code to allow statements from the the top 10 or 15 banks in the country to flow seamlessly into Excel.

- Not going to happen. Adobe is not in the business of creating scripts for other businesses. You can develop such a script yourself or hire someone to do it for you, but keep in mind that any change to the format or layout of these statements will break it. Hence the need to get the raw data in this format without converting it from PDF.

H
Herbert1587Author
New Participant
November 8, 2021

Hi,

 

I am well aware that banks can download statemens in Excel format. Howver, when you ask a bank for statements from 5 or 8 years ago, this isn't an option. Their web based front ends do not go back that  far. So you have to call them direcdtly or send them a subpoena. Then they send you a bunch of paper that has to be scanned. Also, a lot of the Excel formats are not straight and have images that have to taken out if you want to actually get the data out. 

 

It would be much easier if I could just take a PDF statement and have adobe just deal with the images and other non important things in the statement and provide a nice clean Excel sheet. I imageine a lot of Law Firms that have discovery issues, would welocme this feature as well. 

try67
try67
Community Expert
November 8, 2021

Sorry, but what you're saying doesn't make sense at all. It's about a thousand times more difficult to extract data from a PDF file than it is from any other file format (short of images, perhaps).

It sounds like your bank is not doing a very good job of it if they are delivering to you an Excel file with images in it. There should be no difficulties at all exporting data from the bank's database into a purely textual format, regardless of how long ago it was. If it's saved digitally then they should be able to do it. Ask for a CSV or tab-delimited text file, if they can't deliver a usable Excel file.

If they can't deliver that either then you can try to process the PDF files, but I'm telling you it would require the development of a custom-made tool, and even that might not work.

    J E L
    J E L
    Community Expert
    October 31, 2021

    @Herbert1587 Have you asked your banks if they can provide you with statements as Excel files? Both my banks offer this option and I can download statements or transactions in a variety of formats directly from the bank's website within my account. I realize that isn't what you asking for but perhaps at least one of your five banks will offer this option.

     

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