How do I stop Acrobat from merging cells that shouldn't be when converting from PDF to Excel?

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
February 25, 2026
2 replies
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I’m trying to convert this file--obviously originally an Excel file but not something I can have sent to me--back to Excel. https://www.santamonica.gov/media/Document%20Library/Topic%20Explainers/Planning%20Resources/01.2026%20%28JAN%29%20Development%20Tracking%20Projects%20List.pdf

When Acrobat tries to convert it to Excel it insists on merging cells that shouldn’t be for no reason I can figure out. If it simply looked at the lines in the file and realized each of those was a cell in a column or row it would nail it. It doesn’t work though.

Suggestions?

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Can you identify the col/rows that are being merged? My export to Excel looks clean but I’m not checking each of the 635 rows.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

R

RanchoBob949Author

Participating Frequently

The file I converted is attached here. If you click in any cell in row 3 except for A3 you can see how it has merged and centered each cell among multiple rows. For example, the first address--1437 7th street--is merged across columns B, C, D, and E.

Later, in row 87 for example, now the #1 is merged across columns A, B, and C but the name is not merged but the applicant is.

It would be great if there was a solution to this. Right now I’m using ChatGPT to generate tab delimited files and it’s working great after a few false starts.

01.2026 (JAN) Development Tracking Projects List.xlsx