Adobe Acrobat's PDF format is one of the most preferred formats for scanning, storing, and sharing electronic documents. But, what if you want to edit the actual text/data information in the PDF using some other application like Word or Excel?

For example, let's say that you have a printout or a scanned copy of an old spreadsheet detailing year-end inventory. Or, perhaps it's that old homeowner's association contract that you want to get out to the neighborhood for comments regarding possible revisions. What then?

One of the fastest, easiest and most economical solutions around is ABBYY's PDF Transformer 3. This inexpensive program transforms scanned PDFs into editable documents, such as text, Word, Excel, or HTML files. It does an amazing job at preserving original text formatting and getting information into the correct spreadsheet cells. In contrast, while many standard OCR (optical character recognition) software applications can satisfactorily handle the text in standard business letters or reports, you often are required to spend valuable time correcting fonts, re-creating numbered lists and indents, or getting cell data into the proper rows and columns.

PDF Transformer is from ABBYY, one of the industry leaders in OCR software. PDF Transformer 3 includes excellent OCR capabilities and also comes bundled with some extra PDF editing features such as redaction and Bates stamping.

EASY as 1-2-3
To convert a document from a PDF to Word, Excel, or a variety of other formats, you follow a simple 3-step process:

Step 1:

Open the PDF

Step 2:

Set your options.

For this file, I will be converting the PDF into a Word 2007 (*.docx) file. You can also pick a variety of Excel, PDF, and text output options at this point.

Step 3:

Convert!

It's that easy! You will likely have a little bit of cleanup work to do on the output file, but far less than using other conversion methods. The software does a particularly good job putting scanned table data into spreadsheet cells, even when tested with a 100-page scanned table.

i/oTrak specializes in helping organizations of all sizes deal with their specific paper challenges in an easy, open, cost-effective manner. For more information on how we can help make dealing with paper easier in your professional life, contact one of i/oTrak's solution specialists for a free assessment.