There is a wealth of freely available data tables on the net, but available only in PDF format. Now, for those of us that need delimited tables (to use within GIS applications, for example) this stinks. However, last week I discovered the advanced table capabilities included with Acrobat 7.
Last month, my department upgraded our PCs to Acrobat 7 Professional. I thought nothing of it until working on the HIV occurrences in Texas (2004) Google Map project for the Nursing PhD class. (Here is the resulting table.)
There is a ton of great stats provided by the Texas Department of State Health Services, but entirely in PDF format. These advanced capabilities saved me an incredible amount of time. Selected (highlighted) the tables I needed, right-clicked and selected export table to spreadsheet. Excel immediately opened up with a beautifully formatted table.
Perhaps this is common knowledge already, but I wanted to share what I discovered. Remember the olden days using Acrobat 5.0?
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1 comment:
hey i just wanted to say that i just discovered your blog and it is awesome and really useful. thanks so much!!!
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