Some Vendors will provide the user with a nicely formatted Pin Data spreadsheet which is very easy to use with the PartBuilder SPREADSHEET PIN_REPORT_TYPES.

Others will only provide the pinData in a PDF datasheet. Extracting pinData from the PDF file can be quite a chore, but there are some free web-based utilities to help.

Web Based Utilities

There are many free web-based utilities to create a spreadsheet from a pdf file. CadEnhance recommends this site in particular:

https://online2pdf.com/pdf2excel

because it allows the user to select a pdf file and restrict the extraction to selected page ranges

The Website lets you upload the pdf file from your computer and it will convert the contents to a spreadSheet and download it to your computer.

You use the Scissors icon (highlighted in the orange rectangle) to restrict the page ranges to convert so that the resulting spreadsheet will only get the relevant pinoutTable from your datasheet.

Below we show a selection where we tell the tool to extract pages 5-11 into a spreadsheet.

Cleaning up the Converted Spread Sheet

The conversion from PDF to spreadsheet is not always the smoothest process. The tools are getting better, but there may be strange row and column merges in the resulting spreadsheet that the user may have to cleanup. This is due to the nature of the content PDF document which can be rendered in many different ways

Always examine the resulting spreadsheet to verify the contents are what they should be!.

In many cases takes just a few minutes to reformat to make the spreadsheet usable, which is far easier and more reliable than cutting and pasting pdf fields into a spreadsheet by hand (a process which can be fraught with peril since the order that things appear in the pdf file are not always the order they get pasted...)

Manually Cutting and Pasting from PDF to Spreadsheets

When manually cutting and pasting pin Information from a PDF DataSheet into a spreadsheet, cadEnhance recommends using the free Foxit Reader PDF reader available

from: https://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/pdf-reader/ instead of the Adobe Acrobat reader.

The Foxit Reader provides more controls for selecting data fields, and does a much better job of maintaining the source data formatting in cut and paste operations. Acrobat tends to mangle the order and format of the data.

**In all cases, be sure to verify that the order of information that you selected is maintained when you paste it into the spreadsheet. Due to the nature of pdf file structure, the pasted data may come in out of order!

Able2Extract and ABBYY PDF to SpreadSheet converters

If your company is security conscious, or if you need more control over the PDF conversion process, you can use the Able2Extract tool from Investintech, or the ABBYY Fineline PDF Reader.

These tools let you run locally without uploading files to the cloud, and they are pretty inexpensive A lifetime fixed node license is normally available for ~$150.

They also provide much better fine-grained control over the conversion process.

Since many CadEnhance customers use this tool, if you order the license through CadEnhance, we can offer you a 25% discount off the normal price.

Helpful PDF to Spreadsheet Videos

Title	Length	Video link	Description
CadEnhance ScreenCast Video Channel	http://scast.cadenhance.com/pb_convert_pdf_to_ss_channel
PartBuilder:Using online2pdf.com to convert datasheet pdf to a spreadsheet	02:17	video	Here we use the free online2pdf.com website to convert a pdf datasheet table to a spreadsheet for use with PartBuilder
Manually Extracting Pin-Data from poorly formatted PDF (Analog Devices)	10:42	video	We show how Foxit Pdf Reader is a better choice than the Adobe Reader when cutting and pasting regions of text from a pdf to create a pinTable spreadsheet... We go over some tricks on how to best accomplish the task for poorly formatted PDFS like the ones from Analog Devices
Using Able2Extract
Extracting a SIMPLE_BGA SpreadSheet with Able2Extract Auto Mode	02:44	video	We look at using Able2Extract to build a SIMPLE_BGA Spreadsheet for PartBuilder... This first installment shows the issues if you use the default Able2Extract settings
Able2Extract Custom Export	03:03	video	We use the Interactive Custom Export functions in Able2Extract to fix the spreadsheet to make a proper SIMPLE_BGA spreadsheet for PartBuilder
Using able2extract to convert a difficult pdf table Step1	02:51	video	step1 converting difficult pdf table to spreadsheet
Using Able2extract to convert a difficult pdf table step2	12:44	video
Using Able2Extract Custom Mode to improve DRAM SpreadSheet conversion	03:47	video	Using the Custom mode in Able2Extract to improve SpreadSheet, needing less manual intervention
PartBuilder ISL5416 From DataSheet- Step1a Extracting SpreadSheet from PDF with Able2Extract	05:46	video	use Able2Extract to convert ball map in pdf to spreadsheet table
Using ABBYY Fineline PDF Reader
Extracting TQFP Pin Data from PDF with ABBYY Fineline PDF reader	05:23	video	here we use the FineReader PDF 15.0 from ABBYY to convert the Analog Devices LTC7880 TQFP Pin Drawing Into a spreadsheet

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