Converting a .pdf to Excel database

[VegasNath]

Could you provide a small excel sample of what you require?

Bob also included that in the first post.

Ok, having looked a little closer at your samples, I may have gotten a little ahead of myself. However, monarch pro is very versatile, with a lot of imagination and a little (sometimes a lot) of time, you can generally get what you need. The problem that I can see here is that there can be more than 1 record per customer (Total objects at this location). Would there be a maximum?

If each customer had only one record, this would be very easy with monarch.
If there is a low maximum (eg 5) number of records per customer, this would be doable with a little more jiggerypokery.

However, if neither of the above were true, this would be outside my scope.

BUT: I am (in the grand scheme of things) a novice user. I am almost certain that monarch is more than capable of providing what you need. Have you approached monarch technical support for assistance? From a sales point of view, I'm sure they would be able to clarify if it is capable of such a task.

One other problem that I can see is "Location ID 1201557" has 4 records, but the NB on record 1 wraps to a second row. I would have no idea how to handle that, but that does not mean that monarch is not capable.

[VegasNath]

More thought's.
If there is a relatively low number of maximum records per customer, I beleive this CAN be done, partially with monarch and the rest with excel vba. My approach would be to model based upon 5 records per customer (or the maximum). Export to excel, use vba to clear out the blank records, and copy the remaining records to separate rows where applicable. Please confirm if you would like me to trial this for you?

Also, have you tried the monarch forum?

Could you point me to the lessons that you refer to?

[delaneybob]

Thank you fo rthe offer- the desired output is in the first email i sent. I ma plodding thru Monarch now.

Biggest issue is it can't "look up" 1 line which i need it to do for most of the addresses

[delaneybob]

3-4 records per customer maximum even if it means losing some data. The actual .pdf is >12,000 pages

I looked at Lesson 15 in the SW guide that comes with the program is what i was referrin to- I understand that now- it may very well be all I get

i offered to pay but this is a free forum

[VegasNath]

3-4 records per customer maximum even if it means losing some data. The actual .pdf is >12,000 pages

I looked at Lesson 15 in the SW guide that comes with the program is what i was referrin to- I understand that now- it may very well be all I get

i offered to pay but this is a free forum

I'll have a go tomorrow or tuesday and get back to you.

[delaneybob]

I posted here and i do nto see it so please forgive if duplicate. more updates- good ones

I exported as .txt instead of save as- look better- but different. I then exported as xml, which made a bunch of junk in Monarch but the parsing is alot better. i only included a few pages of the xml- had to change it to .txt extension- hopefully does not make it bad when changing it back

Suggestions on which way to go?

[delaneybob]

perhaps HTML?

[VegasNath]

Apologies for not responding sooner, I'm currently working 'the nightmare that is month end', no time to breathe.

Ok, I think I understand your problem. I opened your pdf in monarch and the result was not good, it's just giberish. If the pdf was to open in monarch as you would expect, I think the task would be easy, but that is unfortunately not the case.

Have you had any joy with monarch support?

I wish I could be more help. If you find a way to open the pdf correctly, post back and I will do my best to help you. Good luck.

[HansV]

The text, xml and html exports are all hopeless, with entries such as

1 Britton StreetLocation:

where a label and a data element are jumbled together, and not even in the correct order.

The only good way to retrieve the data would be from the database they're stored in, but you indicated that that is impossible. Pity!

[StuartR]

Maybe this is a problem where a human being could do a better job than a computer.

You could consider using the Amazon Mechanical Turk service to solve it.

[steveh]

I posted here and i do nto see it so please forgive if duplicate. more updates- good ones

Hi Bob

My not knowing anything is legendary in the lounge but I do get 100% for effort!!

I Googled for a free PDF to Excel converter and got this http://www.pdftoexcelonline.com/default.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; , I ran your first example through it and got this

Pages from NJFOIA.xls

, OK it is spread over several pages but I thought maybe somebody with the VBA savvy might be able to write a merge routine if the data was always consistent on the conversion?

HTH

[HansV]

That looks a lot better, but there are still problems, witness this screenshot:

x58.png

Headers and data are combined in the first row, and the NB value is spread over E1 and E2.

[steveh]

That looks a lot better, but there are still problems, witness this screenshot:

x58.png

Headers and data are combined in the first row, and the NB value is spread over E1 and E2.

Hi Hans

Well spotted, I did not notice that, back to the drawing board!!

[delaneybob]

Hi,
I have an idea and Monarch appears to support it but the radio button is not there

Make a series of floating and non floating traps, perhaps only allowing 2 pieces of data per line to be extracted.

In the non floating trap, select end when template is encountered->however this option does nto have a radio button in the advanced tab in Field Properties

[kathon]

The default and only possible extension for Print to File from (my installation of) Adobe Reader v9 is "prn."