» PDF2XL Enterprise

Most modern software applications either export report/screen data directly to excel or provide comma-separated-value files (CSV). For those of you that work with these applications…Good for you, this article is for the less fortunate.

If however you work with applications that do not easily lend its data to Excel, Mainframe/AS400 application, off-the-shelf software that does not support excel export, in-house developed apps whose programmers don’t have the time or budget to add excel export support, then you are in the right spot.

Cogniview, a company that we have reviewed before on its
PDF to Excel conversion software, has released a new tool that they claim can extract the information from any printable report or screen including PDF documents.

Here is an excerpt from their site:
”Whether your data is found in a native PDF, scanned PDF or in any enterprise application, PDF2XL Enterprise will instantly extract your data to Excel.
PDF2XL Enterprise is designed for Excel users and is very easy to operate. If you know how to define a table in Excel you can get the data from your PDF documents, reports and screens into neatly formatted Excel sheets….”

When I tested PDF2XL Enterprise it worked reasonably well, the workflow could have been a bit better, but it managed to take the data out of an 8-year-old windows-based accounting system. I printed one of the reports, and after I understood that I have to send it to the virtual printer and not to my HP Printer (also wasted about 10 A4 pages in the process), I got the report in the PDF2XL Enterprise user interface and just pulled the data into excel (I have to admit that was preaty cool).

Help finish this review
Usually I would conclude here, but I feel that the claim of “being able to convert virtually any printable report or screen” needs to be proven, so I am putting it out there for you to decide. Download PDF2XL Enterprise, try to extract excel data from your application and share the results of your experiment with us, by posting a comment on this article. Once enough comments have been gathered I will write a conclusion to this review.

Joseph Rubin