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Garbled output from PDF to Excel export

Community Beginner ,
May 18, 2023 May 18, 2023

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Whenever I try to select sections of a pdf file and "export selection as", the whole file with the toolbar on the side, or even just a single word, and convert it to an Excel workbook, the result comes out as complete nonsense characters. I can copy and paste parts of single lines just fine, but exporting the text results in gibberish. I did a bit of digging and discovered that part of the problem may be the T3 font that's used in the PDF has caused grief in other situations, but never really found a fix for exporting pdf info to excel. Has anyone else encountered this before? I'm including snippets of input and output text as an example of one part of one line.

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Edit and convert PDFs

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Community Expert ,
May 18, 2023 May 18, 2023

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I think there are 2 problems here:

  1. A PostScript T3 font was used. This is an advanced form of font that isn't widely accepted in some document file formats. Is it possible to use a regular Unicode/OpenType font in the spreadsheet?
  2. The font wasn't embedded into the PDF when it was made from the Excel spreadsheet. Probably either an incorrect method of making a PDF was used (such as File / Print / PDF) or the setting wasn't set to embed all fonts in the PDF Export options.

 

Suggestion: swap out the T3 font for a normal font on the computer system, and re-export the PDF from Excel. If possible, use the Acrobat PDF Maker toolbar in Excel and check that all fonts will be embedded (subsetted if less than 100%).

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer & Technologist for Accessible Documents
|    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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Community Beginner ,
May 18, 2023 May 18, 2023

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I think I wasn't clear enough. I am getting the PDF file from an outside source I have no control over. Then I'm taking the PDF text contents and converting it to an Excel Workbook. I have no control over the T3 font on the PDF, that's how it's presented to me. 

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Community Expert ,
May 19, 2023 May 19, 2023

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Ok, that explains things better.

 

First, when you export a PDF from Acrobat to Excel, it will export the entire PDF, nor portions or selections of it. So it's all or nothing.

 

Once the spreadsheet is exported, select the text in Excel and reformat it using a standard font from your system. That should remove all references to the T3 font. See if that clears up the gibberish text.

 

Questions:

What version of Adobe Acrobat are you using:

  • Standard or Pro
  • Version and build number
  • Mac or Windows

 

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer & Technologist for Accessible Documents
|    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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Community Beginner ,
May 19, 2023 May 19, 2023

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You can absolutely export selected sections of text. You highlight the text you want, right-click the highlighted selection, "Export Selection As..." and choose whatever file type you're going for. It'll export exactly the portion you have highlighted. Been doing it for many other PDF statements the past few weeks, this particular one is just not cooperating. I tried exporting the whole thing as well using the tool just to make sure it wasn't a selection issue, the same nonsense output happens no matter what. 

 

After attempting another export, changing the font in Excel does nothing but change the font of the gibberish. 

 

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

2015 Release (Continuous)

Version 2015.009.20077

Windows

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New Here ,
May 22, 2024 May 22, 2024

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this is not true. I have been importing information from cad files saved as pdf and I  hve been able to export as excel format without any problems, however todya I found a couple of exceptions and I can not find the solution

 

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