Yep, they sook (Scots for 'suck')

The only thing I find useful about them is to publish information that should never have anything done with it other than read. Working for the city, we use them to publish legal crap. Thats about it. They are always the FINAL destination for data.

quote:

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Originally posted by: BrianS
"The only thing I find useful about them is to publish information that should never have anything done with it other than read. Working for the city, we use them to publish legal crap. Thats about it. They are always the FINAL destination for data."

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This I can understand. But the U.S. government gets too caried away with PDFs, isn't it the law that certain public documents have to be published in PDF formats?

What's up with the IRS providing tax forms in PDF format?

http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/lists/0,,id=97817,00.html

What, am I supposed get out my pen and paper and go to work on this thing? Give me something useful, like an Excel file!

Right, my quandary is completely effed up. I'm being given 6 huge PDF files (like 400 pages) on a monthly basis chock-a-bloc full of numbers that I'm supposed to analyze. Say what? I'm not rekeying that crap!

So here's what I do. Save the sucker as an rtf format. This almost works, the problem is that null fields don't coerce properly, they're ignored and now I have jumbled fields amongst my 10,000 records. I can try to hack around this, but it'd be nicer if the software actually worked as advertised!!

So, pretend this works, which it doesn't, then I can open the file in Word, open Excel and run something like the following:

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Sub PullWordTables2()
Dim wrdObj As Object, tbl As Object
Dim ws As Worksheet, i As Long
On Error GoTo errTime
Set wrdObj = GetObject(, "Word.Application")
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
For Each tbl In wrdObj.activedocument.tables
    i = i + 1
    tbl.Range.Copy
    Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets.Add
    With ws
        .Move , Sheets(ThisWorkbook.Worksheets.Count)
        .Name = "Table " & i
        .Range("a1").PasteSpecial xlValues
        Application.CutCopyMode = False
        .Cells.Replace What:="/", Replacement:=vbNullString
    End With
Next
errTime:
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Set ws = Nothing
Set wrdObj = Nothing
If CBool(Err.Number) Then _
    MsgBox Err.Description
End Sub

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And bingo, I got 193 new worksheets with all of the tables in about 8 seconds... But I still have to overcome the effed up rtf coversion!!

PDF files are the bane of my existence!!

quote:

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Originally posted by: Andromeda
" Well sometimes you get lucky and they use pdfs that you can fill out online"

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Lucky?

I can barely hand write cheques anymore. And my handwriting has gone from barely legible to a complete disaster...

Not sure, the kind of chaos we're talking about here might be hard to replicate.