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begleydr
Participant
June 6, 2018
Answered

Converting PDF to Excel or Word displays image instead of text

  • June 6, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 23674 views

When I try to convert a PDF document to either word or excel, the resulting document contains an image within the document. For example, if converting to excel my converted document contains images pasted in the cells of the spreadsheet, rather than straight text. Same thing when converting to word, I get an image that I can re-size and move around, but it doesn't just display the text for me to manipulate. I have the adobe PDF pack with an active subscription to Export PDFs. I'm on a windows 10 machine, using internet explorer. I just wnt the plain text to be in my excel or word document, but it doesn't seem to be exporting properly?? Any ideas are appreciated.

    Correct answer AkanchhaS8194121

    Hi Begleydr,

    Sorry for the delay in response to your query and thanks for sharing the detailed information.

    The quality of converted document depends on the type of pdf you start with. Which means the content of your pdf document will come up as result in exported file.

    • The pdf file you are exporting, does it contain real text or it has image in it?
    • Or what is the source of the pdf and how it was created? Is it a scanned document?
    • Do you experience this problem with all the pdf files you are have exported or is it a specific file? Check with any other file and see the result.

    If your pdf contain real text and its not a scanned file, then please share a sample copy of the document. We would like to test the same at our end.

    "You can share the file with us via email. And you can send it to the email that is shared via private message. Please do mention your forum thread in the subject"

    Regards,

    Akanchha

    3 replies

    C
    Cristian28062361yqey
    Participant
    January 24, 2023

    Hi, not sure if this will help others, but for the last 2 days I'm struggling to convert a PDF which contains tables/sheets of working hours (so they have many horizontal and vertical lines) and I had the same issues, with some of the pdfs being converted perfectly, while others are displaying images instead of data in excel, and I am not able to compare to tables and work some functions on them if some have data and some have pictures.

    I just found out now that my problem comes from when I'm saving the PDF file from my scheduling app. One simple selection/click and then all reports are converted correctly after.

     

    Found a way to convert the schedule report from my app in excel format:
    • Open the app
    • CTRL+P to fake that I'm printing the schedule sheets
    • at "Destination" of the printer, select "Save as"
    • Unhide "More settings"
    • if you want your report not to have too many repetitive tabs, select A0 Paper size (you can work with A4 as well)
    • it is MANDATORY (that was the glitch due to witch my conversion kept having data AND pictures instead of just data) to click/select down at Option "Background graphics"
    • Click Save
    • Open it in Adobe and convert it there easily; it will work
    If this is helping anyone by any chance, I've attached a picture of the click needed to be selected; for me, this has sorted my issues of no more images being displayed.

     

      Z
      ZATariq
      Participant
      June 17, 2020

      I am alos having the same issue. when i convert an adobe image based file conating a table into excel, it convert it into a lot of small images of that table data in excel. they are readable but not in  text. I can share those files for your review upon having your contact email. 

      W
      Warren22653536pv9f
      Participant
      January 14, 2022

      Yes having same problem, it only started happening in the last few months.  I could previously copy and paste tables from PDF reports into Excel no problem but now the cell entries float above the cells as pictures.

      R
      Ronald233720978q6n
      Participant
      March 8, 2022

      I am having the same problem.  Mine is a PDF that was scanned from a printed Excel file.  Quality was good enough for Kofax, but now that I switched to Adobe (for other reasons), I seem to have lost the ability to convert these kinds of files to Excel.

      AkanchhaS8194121
      AkanchhaS8194121Correct answer
      Legend
      June 11, 2018

      Hi Begleydr,

      Sorry for the delay in response to your query and thanks for sharing the detailed information.

      The quality of converted document depends on the type of pdf you start with. Which means the content of your pdf document will come up as result in exported file.

      • The pdf file you are exporting, does it contain real text or it has image in it?
      • Or what is the source of the pdf and how it was created? Is it a scanned document?
      • Do you experience this problem with all the pdf files you are have exported or is it a specific file? Check with any other file and see the result.

      If your pdf contain real text and its not a scanned file, then please share a sample copy of the document. We would like to test the same at our end.

      "You can share the file with us via email. And you can send it to the email that is shared via private message. Please do mention your forum thread in the subject"

      Regards,

      Akanchha

      D
      Deborah22983402il1p
      Participant
      February 3, 2022

      Has anyone found an answer to this? I would really like to break down the image it palces into excel into lines on the spreadsheet?

      Meenakshi Negi
      Community Manager
      Meenakshi NegiCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      February 7, 2022

      Hi Deborah,

       

      Thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the delay in response.

       

      Could you please let us know more details about the issue? Does this happen with all the PDFs you convert?

      Are you converting PDFs using the Acrobat Online account or the Acrobat desktop application?

      Would you mind sharing any sample PDF with us to replicate the behavior?

       

      Thanks,

      Meenakshi

       

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