Exporting ONLY the mail merge data from PDF to excel

[Izzii0x]

Hi all,

A colleague of mine (who is now on holiday) has set up 16 tranches of letters to go out (around 2000 per tranche) each day, to different companies. We have realised halfway through this campaign that there are duplicates within each tranche. Not sure how many but could be hundreds - we don't want to send the same company multiple letters so need to export a list of each company that is within each 'tranche' (which are separate documents).

We have colleagues who can use Acrobat to export PDFs to excel so I can complete a lookup within excel to search for duplicates, unfortunately it just exports the whole letter format into 1 cell which isn't going to work. Is there a way to export only the mail merge data? In this scenario that would be the company name/address. That way it would show me the name on each cell and I can complete a lookup between all the different documents.

Thank you in advance!

[try67]

If that data exists within form fields, sure. You can use the Merge Data Files into Spreadsheet command in Acrobat to achieve it (look under Tools - Prepare Form - More). However, isn't that just the same as doing it directly on the original Excel file?

Just remove the duplicates there and then generate new PDFs...

[Izzii0x]

There is no "original excel file" anymore. The colleague did not save the data he mail merged after doing so. This is why it's causing so much of an issue.

So within Acrobat, just 'merge data files into spreadsheet' will take just the data used for the merge and put it into a new spreadsheet?

[try67]

Ooof, that's a bad way of doing things. Make sure to instruct them to always keep a copy of the original data in the future.

But yes, doing it like that through Acrobat should generate a new spreadsheet with all the data that was copied to the files (but not any data that wasn't, of course).

[Izzii0x]

Are you able to show screenshots? We could see the Tools - Prepare Form, but then couldn't see the 'more' bit? (apologies, I never use the software).

[try67]

What version of Acrobat do you use, exactly?

[Izzii0x]

It is Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Continuous release? So think it's version 2019.012.20035

[try67]

Try this: Open a fillable form and then look under Edit - Form Options. It should appear there too, I believe.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

See also: Collect and manage PDF form data, Adobe Acrobat

[Izzii0x]

Thanks so much!