Extracting data from PDF

[Guest]

We are a testing firm and have a client that wants to scan in their answer sheets (similar to the page you bubbled in with your #2 pencil when you took the SATs) and send them to us electronically for use in scoring.  I have Adobe Pro X and have tried doing a sample scan of a completed answer sheet.  I've tried converting to a spreadsheet and saving as an Excel file.  And I have tried selecting the area of the answer sheets, right-clicking and "export selection as" (which does not work) but wouldn't be a great solution anyway as this electronic file will have dozens of answer sheets in one file.  So far, nothing extracts the data in a useable format for me.  It creates @, (r) or (c) notations where there are completed bubbles.  Is there any way to extract just the data (the bubbled in marks) from the PDF of the answer sheet into an Excel spreadsheet where I can run it through our scoring process?  The PERFECT solution would be for it to give me columns number 1 through 100 and in each column would be A, B, C, or D (depending on the bubbled in answer).   Any chance I could get that to happen??  If it doesn't work with Adobe Pro X - do any other Adobe products have this capability?

[try67]

Very unlikely if this is a scanned document. You would need a custom-made image analysis software to do something like that, and even then there are likely to be false results.

If this was a digital form it would be very easy, of course...

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

I am not aware of any Adobe product that provides OMR capabilities. You need software that is designed for this purpose. Search for OMR software on Google for some solutions.

[Guest]

Thanks very much OMR software seems to be what I'm looking for.  I've done a search and there are a lot of options.  I guess I'll just have to figure out what bells & whistles are important to my scoring department now.

Thanks again!