Q: How do you extract tables from a PDF document (like the quarterly earnings report of a company) and paste them into Excel for further editing or what-if analysis.

A: If you have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can open the PDF file, select the table with your mouse and copy-paste that data into Excel.

If you don’t have Acrobat, you can upload the file the online PDF to Excel Converter here and specify you email address where you want to receive this PDF as an editable XLS document.

PDF documents converted with this utility will work in Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Google Docs, Corel WordPerfect and any other software that can open open XLS or XLSX files.

Remember that this utility won’t convert your entire PDF into an Excel file - it will just identify the tables in the PDF and will package them into the XLS file while retaining the font styles, colors, cell height and other formatting.