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Import Acrobat xfdf (XML) files into Excel?

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 5:15 pm
by pcgardner
I am very new to XML, so please forgive me if I'm not using the correct terminology.

I am receiving form data from an Acrobat PDF document. The data is in xfdf format, which is a kind of XML. I want to be able to import these data files into Excel so that each import results in a new record (appended).

I can import the files, using Excel 2003's XML Import function. I get a warning message "The specified XML source does not refer to a schema. Excel will create a schema based on the XML source data." Which it does.

The problem is that the import results in two columns, the first containing the field names and the second containing their values. (Actually there are four columns, but it's easy to delete the unwanted ones.) Then if I import another data file, the same thing happens again; the data is imported to new rows, and all the field names are repeated.

Presumably, if I had the correct schema, I could get the layout I want, which is for all the field names to appear as column headings (once only), and for the field values to appear as data in subsequent rows, one record per row.

But I have no idea how to achieve this! Can anyone point me in the right direction? I would be very grateful.

Phil

Re: Import Acrobat xfdf (XML) files into Excel?

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2013 12:18 am
by Anthony
Hi, as your post is 8 years old I guess you'll have moved on by now. I was just letting you know that I have just written a small utility that lets you load a selected set of XFDF files into an Excel spreadsheet. It needs to be told (using a configuration file) which form fields go where in the spreadsheet, but you can find it at http://www.tarrget.info/XFDF2XL, it's free and I think I have covered everything you need to know on my site. Let me know if anything isn't clear.