How do you import data from excel file into a pdf?

[Lisa Johns]

We have a list of 300 employees in which we need to import their employee data from an excel file into individual Evals. Can this be done?

[Thom Parker]

Why yes it can. First there is a PDFMaker add-in for Office that will do this from Word. Haven't used it, but if you search for "Mail Merge" on this forum you'll find plenty of posts on this topic.

You can also write a simple script to do it. Save the data to a Tab Delimited file (.txt) and then use the "doc.importAsText" function.  

There's a paid for addin for Acrobat for this here:

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/ImportExport-Excel-Data-as-Text-Description.cfm

You'll find general info about importing and exporting data here:

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/ExcelAndAcrobat.cfm

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/Form-Data-Handling.cfm

[Lisa Johns]

Thank you, Thom.

So this "simple script" you mentioned: "doc.importAsText" function

Can you explain a bit more?? Sorry....it's a bit out of my knowledge base. Do I use this function in Acrobat or Excel? Where is it?

[Amal.]

Hi Lisa, 

We are sorry for the trouble. As described you want to import data from excel into PDF file.

++ Adding to the discussion

Do you have Adobe Acrobat DC (Subscription) or Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (Freeware application)? If you have Adobe Acrobat DC (Subscription) you may please refer to the steps provided in a similar discussion here (https://answers.acrobatusers.com/Can-I-import-data-Excel-spreadsheet-fillable-PDF-Form-q113686.aspx) and see if that works. 

You may also refer to the steps provided in the help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/collecting-pdf-form-data.html#manage_form_data_files)

Let us know how it goes. 

Regards

Amal

[Lisa Johns]

Thank you, Amal.

The first link you provided was where I started from. But it's not feasible to do 1 record at a time when you have 200-300 records to do at once.  😞

[try67]

This is called a Mail Merge. You can do it using the Adobe plugin in Word but not in Excel, for some reason.

It can be done using a script, as mentioned. For example, you can do it very easily using this (paid-for) tool I've developed, which even allows you to automatically email the merged files to the recipients, if you want to: http://try67.blogspot.com/2011/09/acrobat-mail-merge-and-email.html