When it comes to data, you don’t want to bury your head in the sand. At the same time, you never know what kinds of files might come your way—and some of them can be hard to read or modify. One common kind of document that’s not ideal for working with data is a PDF file.
While these are great for storing information like contracts, they’re not always easy to use when it comes time to make changes or share information with others. So what can you do if you need to convert PDFs into Excel spreadsheets? Here are five reasons why converting PDF to an Excel file is a smart move.
Organize your data
One of the main benefits of converting your PDF data to Excel is that it makes organizing and understanding your data easier. Once you’ve imported your PDF, you can use Excel’s tools to organize it by columns and rows. This makes it much easier to find specific information later on.
Easily share or collaborate with others
In the digital world, collaboration is essential. It’s hard to collaborate on PDFs because of the lack of access to data and sorting and filtering capabilities.
But when you convert your PDF files into Excel spreadsheets, it’s easy to share your work with others. You can also easily sort and filter through data in Excel to get the results that you need for your research project or presentation.
Modify the data you need to change
You can also modify the font, size, color, style and alignment of the data you need to change. This is done using a combination of Ctrl+B (bold), Ctrl+I (italic), and Ctrl+U (underline), as well as other commonly used formatting controls such as text wrapping options.
As per the experts at Adobe Acrobat, “Excel allows you to format your data in many different ways so that it’s easier for you to read and interpret.” It also helps your collaborators understand what they are looking at when they look at a spreadsheet on their own computers or mobile devices.
Filter and sort information
Filtering and sorting are two of the most powerful tools that Excel offers. You can filter data to find specific information and sort it by different criteria, such as date or category.
If you’re working with a large amount of data, these functions will help you find exactly what you need so that you don’t waste time looking through the wrong information. If a particular piece of information is located on another page in your PDF file, those filters can help narrow down exactly where it is within your spreadsheet.
Create charts, graphs, and visualizations
You may want to create charts, graphs and visualizations to better understand the data. The ability to visualize data is an integral part of modern business intelligence. For example, many businesses use Excel’s built-in charting capabilities to display sales information by region or time period. And in order for these charts and graphs to be useful, it’s important that they have all of their data on hand—from the start date through end date—and that it all fits neatly into one spreadsheet file.
When you convert your data from PDF to Excel, you can make modifications and share it with others easily. Also, there are other benefits of converting the file into an excel format, such as organizing the information in a better way and adding some calculations on top of it.
