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Best answer

Acrobat form export to spreadsheet

  • 1 November 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 226 views
N

Hello, I have a bunch of fillable pdf forms. Currently when someone completes it, it needs to be email to our team. 

I am trying to streamline this process:

In the pdf, I added a submit form button, now the complete pdf is sent to my email address. Cool. 

But I want all the field data to go to one excel or google sheet so it is easy to manage this data. 

Is that something I can do from acrobat to excel? The email I get only has the pdf as an attachment. I don’t know how to make the field data to appear in the body of the email. 

ANy wisdom on how to make pdf export all data automatically into an excel, or even better, make the pdf an online form like a google form would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!
:grin:

icon

Best answer by andywingrave 9 February 2021, 17:54

View original
This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

6 replies

andywingrave
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hello! If the PDF is already filled and you want to process this into data, the only way to do this (as far as I’m aware) is with an OCR tool

You could try something like https://www.convertapi.com/ which has https://www.convertapi.com/pdf-to-ocr 

Fundamentally what you’re trying to do is kinda hard to get right 100% of the time, and the solutions available are pretty technical but it is possible.

 

If on the other-hand you aren’t sending a completed pdf, and you’re sending form data to Zapier to process, then HOORAY 🎊 - what you’re trying to do is really simple, and you should be able to get started really easily with Zapier. 

 

N

Hello! If the PDF is already filled and you want to process this into data, the only way to do this (as far as I’m aware) is with an OCR tool

You could try something like https://www.convertapi.com/ which has https://www.convertapi.com/pdf-to-ocr 

Fundamentally what you’re trying to do is kinda hard to get right 100% of the time, and the solutions available are pretty technical but it is possible.

 

If on the other-hand you aren’t sending a completed pdf, and you’re sending form data to Zapier to process, then HOORAY 🎊 - what you’re trying to do is really simple, and you should be able to get started really easily with Zapier. 

 

Thank you for your reply. I am the sender of the pdf form, and I would like to collect the recipients’ answers to the form in a google sheet / excel. 

I have no idea where to start, since in explore zap section, acrobat is not available. Can you enlighten me please? :)

andywingrave
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Can I ask - What would stop you from creating a web version of the form?

This is really the only way to do what you’d like without a really technical (and still unreliable) solution. Check out Google Forms or Typeform? 

N

Actually that’s where we are. We have a google form which lacks design control (google form looks so basic).

We have requests to be able to fill in the form offline when they are in locations where internet connection is dodgy, so some forms are done as PDF.

we want to streamline all forms to one design and version, and all completed form data will be fed to relevant google sheet.

we tried jotform but after nearly 3 weeks of perseverance with their tech team, we are still unable to use their PDF submit function. 

andywingrave
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Ok - That makes sense. But then you could just build out the pdfs from form responses instead of parsing data from a pdf which is exponentially harder.

andywingrave
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey! Hope you got this solved!

As mentioned, I’d normally say that a Form tool is more reliable than using an OCR tool to parse the PDF data once formatted (mainly because they are often less reliable)

So the flow would look like this:

  1. New Form submitted
  2. Send data to Excel

Hope that helps!

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