Barbara Cross,Negosentro | How a PDF Converter Can Improve Your Business Intelligence Workflows | Business intelligence software is used to discover, clean, analyze, and present data in a meaningful way. By doing so, businesses of all sizes can gain valuable insights for sustaining growth, solving issues, and anticipating future events.
BI solutions can be a single app or a suite of tools. Whether they are primarily made to produce highly visual reports, make collaboration easier, or just to make data accessible to everyone in an organization, the ultimate goal of a BI solution is to help executives make better business decisions. And there are power BI free and paid courses available as well to help you adopt this technology.
Even though competition in the field is fierce, the prices of BI solutions are still high, especially for new businesses and startups. That’s why it’s important to understand that you can utilize the tool you probably already have at your disposal for your Business Intelligence needs. And that tool is Microsoft Excel.
It comes as no surprise that Microsoft is constantly improving Excel’s BI features, so Excel is today being used at all stages of the BI process. It’s safe to say that Excel is one of the most important components of BI workflows.
Yet problems arise when companies get big amounts of data in Portable Document Format (PDF). Since PDFs are not editable by default and keep their layout on every digital screen, they are the top choice for sharing documents. On the other hand, implementing them into BI workflows can be an issue.
The best solution to overcome this obstacle is to convert PDF to Excel. If you want to transfer table data from PDF to Excel for complex business analysis, you need to have a tool that can do it fast and accurate. Able2Extract Professional 12 proved to be one such tool, capable of converting PDF to Excel with great precision and speed thanks to its advanced features.
In this article, we’ll explain how Able2Extract can help you improve and speed up BI workflows when it comes to PDF to Excel conversion.
Automatic PDF to Excel Conversion
If the layout of the PDF table is good enough and you just want to extract the data as is, the quickest way is to go for an automatic PDF to Excel conversion.
Here’s how:
- Open the file – click the Open icon in the Command toolbar and browse for the file.
- Select the area for conversion – choose All or Area under the Select section of the Command toolbar depending on would you like to convert the whole document or just a part of it.
- Convert to Excel – click on the Excel icon in the Command toolbar and select Automatic option in the pop-up window.
By following these 3 easy steps you’ll get your PDF converted to Excel and your data will be ready for analysis in seconds.
Batch PDF Conversion
This option is useful if you have a lot of PDFs and you like the structure of PDF tables inside.
To convert multiple PDFs to Excel quickly, click on the Batch icon in the Command toolbar. Next, add individual files or whole folders to the queue, enter security code, and hit Convert.
The Excel conversion is selected by default as well as the Same as source checkbox for the output folder. Of course, you can always change the output location by unchecking the box and browsing for the desired directory.
Custom PDF to Excel Conversion
If you want to have a full control over PDF to Excel output result, choose Custom option in the Convert to Excel pop-up window.
You can then manually add and delete columns, rows, and whole tables; edit header and footer; manage named table structures, and more. Arguably, one of the most useful features of Able2Extract lets you Preview output result as you custom tailor your conversion.
Bonus tip: If you receive a lot of PDFs with the same layout but different data (monthly financial reports, for example), you can set up your Custom PDF to Excel conversion the first time, Save Custom Excel Template, and reuse it later by selecting Load Custom Excel template from the File menu.
We suggest that you further explore BI Excel features and add-ons you can use to make data-backed business decisions before you even consider subscribing to some other BI solution. The reason is simple – if you already have Excel and you’re familiar with its capabilities, there’s no need to invest time and money into alternatives.
And if your company is dealing with PDFs regularly, it’s definitely better to invest in a powerful PDF suite. Tools such as Able2Extract Pro 12 can complement your Business Intelligence processes and vastly improve PDF related BI workflows.
