Paste from Acrobat Reader

[jbrokars]

I need a cell format that allows me to reliably paste from acrobat
reader a small box of text in to excel so I can work with the sales
numbers.

Some of the time I <copy> from Acrobat reader and <paste> into a single
cell OF EXCEL and the data is SPLIT automatically into individual cells
and data that is a number is registered as a number. This is great and
exactly what I want.

However, sometimes the text remains together as text and instead of
splitting into individual cells, only stays in a single cell in four
seperate columns. This happens arbitrarily and without reason, even
though I have copied the format of the cells that do this and used
those same formatted cells for areas I can paste into.

I know how to go to the Data column in the tool bar and select <text to
columns> and go through that route. I will be asking many people to
use this template - so I do not want to explain that method -
Especially because EXCEL will automatically do this sometimes already.

What are the format conditions that allow the text to be split
automatically when I <paste> from acrobat reader? How can I reliably
have others <paste> into Excel so I can have a template work with their
sales numbers?



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[David McRitchie]

hi jbrokars,

Using the free Acrobat Reader, you can only copy one column at a time
from PDF to paste into Excel.

For a free solution (alternative to full acrobat), you can use
PDFEDIT995 -- http://www.pdf995.com/
to create HTML and from the HTML with Excel 2000 and up
you can copy and paste into an Excel worksheet.

You can post questions directly to the Excel newsgroups.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/xlnews.htm

HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm