Data Comparison

[Thorrrr]

Hi

Really weird problem I have with a report generated by a application at
work. I run off a monthly report of products completed by employees. It
shows the following info in a pdf report

User ID No Products Date Sub Date Last Sub Last Date Sub
Smith_0001 5 01/01/2006 10/01/2006 10/01/2006
Brown_0002 8 02/01/2006 11/01/2006 11/01/2006

Etc but it lists about 300 staff over 14 pages when I copy it and paste it
into Excel it lists all the names followed by numbers followed by dates all
in the A column. Then when it hits another page starts with names again
dates are blank and a * I spaced there.

I want to be able to drop it in Excel like above with the names split form
the number and that placed in another cell and the No's and dates to fill in
the rows. I cannot special paste from Adobe and Transpose I have to
pasted then re copy but then the Transpose takes a lot of mucking about.

Is there a way I can manipulate the text to do as I wish ???

If that is possible as you see the list includes some 350 people are part of
different departments on different areas of the company. I have a Excel
spreadsheet showing were they work. Now i know in Acess this would be
easy but we are banned from using access at work.

So i need to know if it is possible to use the pdf file and compare it
with the master departments list and create a list from the pdf
showing who is in what group and how many submissions?

Cheers Dale

Please help me with this issue showing me how to do it. I can send a sample
file if you need me to.

 

[Puppet_Sock]

Really weird problem I have with a report generated by a application at
work. I run off a monthly report of products completed by employees. It
shows the following info in a pdf report

User ID No Products Date Sub Date Last Sub Last Date Sub
Smith_0001 5 01/01/2006 10/01/2006 10/01/2006
Brown_0002 8 02/01/2006 11/01/2006 11/01/2006

Etc but it lists about 300 staff over 14 pages when I copy it and paste it
into Excel it lists all the names followed by numbers followed by dates all
in the A column. Then when it hits another page starts with names again
dates are blank and a * I spaced there.

Let me make sure I understand. So, instead of the nice format you
have in your table there, what you see when you past is:

Smith_0001
Brown_0002
5
8
01/01/2006
02/01/2006

and so on, with the rest of the dates? So it looks like your source
app is storing data in columns rather than rows.

If there is some way you can reliably recognize when you've got
to the bottom of a set of names, then it would be fairly straight
forward to write a macro to put things back. Select cells A1 through
A10 (or whatever) and copy them to someplace nice. Then cells
A11 through A20, and so on. All you need is some way for the
macro to see the first and last name, then keep going.

As to the part about "dates are blank and a * I spaced there"
I don't understand that. Maybe your source app is not interacting
with the clipboard properly across page boundaries. You might
have to copy/paste each page by itself. Lot of pain for a 14 page
report that gets produced each day.

Another option is to see if your source app will output the data
in some format that is easier to use. For example, can you
persuade it to output a comma sep. values file? Or values
separated by any reliable character such as a tab or something
that won't be in any of the data fields? If so, you can easily
read that in.
Socks

 

[Thor's Castle]

Let me make sure I understand. So, instead of the nice format you
have in your table there, what you see when you past is:

Smith_0001
Brown_0002
5
8
01/01/2006
02/01/2006

and so on, with the rest of the dates? So it looks like your source
app is storing data in columns rather than rows.

Yes thats correct!!!

If there is some way you can reliably recognize when you've got
to the bottom of a set of names, then it would be fairly straight
forward to write a macro to put things back. Select cells A1 through
A10 (or whatever) and copy them to someplace nice. Then cells
A11 through A20, and so on. All you need is some way for the
macro to see the first and last name, then keep going.

As to the part about "dates are blank and a * I spaced there"
I don't understand that. Maybe your source app is not interacting
with the clipboard properly across page boundaries. You might
have to copy/paste each page by itself. Lot of pain for a 14 page
report that gets produced each day.

No it shows a * if the product is 0 because this last column says date when product submitted so if it is 0 it obviously has no date so it shows a *. I think the only way it would know the names have finished is the cell goes to numbeers from text

Another option is to see if your source app will output the data
in some format that is easier to use. For example, can you
persuade it to output a comma sep. values file? Or values
separated by any reliable character such as a tab or something
that won't be in any of the data fields? If so, you can easily
read that in.
Socks

It only shoves out in pdf unless i can get Adobe Reader to save as another file type.??