Pulling Data from a Scanned PDF into Excel July 1, 2015
Posted by carolhagen in Bluebeam Revu, Construction Industry - Software.Tags: Bluebeam Tips, convert table data to spreadsheet, Excel, Export Data, extract data from PDF
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When printed materials are distributed at your next seminar or meeting, or your find a magazine that contains a table that you find valuable, most people scan the document to PDF to save it for later. Sometimes you want this data entered into a database or added to spreadsheet. If you can get it to a spreadsheet you can usually import into a database but who wants to key in all that data? There’s a better way if you have Bluebeam Revu Extreme.
In today’s Bluebeam tip I’ll step you thru scanning a page from an Owner’s Manual and export the part numbers to Excel.
For those who do not want to watch a video, there are two basic steps:
1. Scanning the Document to PDF
File | Create and choose From Scanner or Camera then follow the prompts displayed to select your scanner or camera, page size and document attributes (Black & White, Grayscale, etc)
2. Export to an Excel Workbook
File | Export and choose Excel Workbook | Page Region and then draw a rectangle around the data, including the column headings. Bluebeam Extreme does the rest!
Here are a few other ideas of how you could use this:
Accounting: Import the expenses from a credit card statement so you can sort by expense type and subtotal in Excel.
Business Development: Grab the top business lists from local publications for leads and their phone numbers.
What other ideas will you come up with to export to Excel?
Carol's Construction Technology Blog 
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsI have a simple accounting office programme is it possible or expensive to get the scan recognise the number which would already be on date base and accredit same?
Would it be an expressive exercise
Thank you
Donald
It works best if your data is consistent ( something in every column). Scans don’t always get good results as font recognition can also be an issue.
Carol, I need to create a script to pull the same range of information from several sheets (pages 34-156) in a document and save them to an excel workbook and name each tab the page name of the page that the information was pulled off of. Is there a way to automate this? I have never scripted in bluebeam before and would like to learn.
Mark,
When you say same range of information are you referring to the full page or a portion of a page?
Portion of the page would be preferable.
The Bluebeam Revu eXtreme Script Reference does not have a command to export an Excel workbook yet. Make a suggestion to Bluebeam.
Okay. Thank you for your help. I appreciate you taking your time to help out a new user. Have a great day.
Carol,
This is another long shot, but is there a way to search for text and then apply a markup or count, then have it search again for another text and apply a different markup or count. I.e. Search for “Tom” apply a count called Tom. Search for “Jill” apply a count called Jill. Search for “Jerry” and apply a count called Jerry.
I have to search for the same items over and over again in contract documents and automating this would be amazing. It is already way better since I found the search function can be used with the count function.
Also, is there a way to make the search function ignore parts of every page?
Thanks,