Red text in PDF converted to negative values in Excel

[lisam63735841]

I am using Adobe Acrobat Prog 2017, Version 2017.011.30079 to convert pdf files to Excel in MS office 365ProPlus.  The pdf files have red text that get converted to a negative value in Excel.  Any ideas how I can prevent the numbers as being interpreted as negative?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Regrettably, there is no option to disable this heuristic used to export Excel files from PDF. Since one of the common formatting options in Excel is to format negative numbers in red, such numbers are translated into negative numbers in the Excel spreadsheet. It's one of those “you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't” situations.

One must remember that PDF is a final form file format retaining none of the context of the original document from which the PDF file was created. As such, any and all of the PDF export functions must make “best effort” guesses as to how to interpret arbitrary strings of characters in a PDF file in the context of the target format. In this particular case, negative numbers are a reasonable interpretation of red digits.

As in all PDF export operations, it is exceptionally prudent to review and edit the results very carefully to find and fix anomalies such as you have reported.

          - Dov