Export to spreadsheet

[Arnold]

I had asked a while back about exporting measurements (area, distance, perimeter) to an Excel file (CSV). At the time I believe I was told it would be easy to implement. Is this going to be implemented at some point? I am making an effort to switch to analyzing blueprints electronically instead of printing all that paper. Thanks.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Arnold,

If you can dig out the old topic so we have a bit more details to remember the request, we would check our schedule and how things are going and hopefully would place yours in our ToDo list.

Best,
Stefan

[Arnold]

I think the attached screenshot may help to explain it. I can customize the menu to add the command "Export measurements to CSV file" but the resulting file seems to be delimited by semi-colons, not commas. It therefor does not open properly in Excel.

Add a command for orthographic lines and you have Acrobat out-gunned.

Thank you.

[John - Tracker Supp]

Arnold - your files are not being attached - are you 'zipping' them first ?

If you do not archive attachments to either a .ZIP, .RAR or 7z file format - they will be removed before ever reaching the forum.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

To be honest, there is such feature, but it is not included into any menu or toolbars. By the way, using customization you can put it on toolbar or menubar.
To do this, press right mouse button on toolbar area, and select "Customize..." from popup menu.
Now switch to "Commands" page into "Customize" dialog, and into "Tools" category please find the command "Export Measurements to CSV File". Drag it on any toolbar or into menu.

HTH.

[Arnold]

That is exactly what I did. I dragged the command onto a menu bar. However, it then produces a file named (current file name).csv but it appears to be limited by semi-colons (;) and not by commas (,). So this feature does exist, but needs to be tweaked I would guess.

I forgot to zip the file and just attached a pdf file. But, I think everyone knows what I am referring to at this point. The feature is there, and I do not mind putting it on the menu bar. Piece of cake the way you guys have it set up.

I know I may be part of a small group that uses PDFX Viewer for this type of work. Would it be hard to fix the problem with the .csv files it produces?

Thank you.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

When we will export using comma (,) as a delimiter, MS Excel will doesn't recognize this file as CSV - it will put whole line in one cell

And, for your info, Adobe Acrobat also exports measures into CSV with ';' delimiter.

[Arnold]

I can export measurements from Acrobat 9 and the file opens fine in Excel. If I take the same pdf file and export from PDFX Viewer, the file looks like this in Excel.

Label;Type;Value;Unit;Page;
;Distance;"152,23";"ft";0

The 152.23 shows up as 152,23 also.

Here is what it looks like using Acrobat.

Label,Type,Value,Unit,
"Distance:",Distance,"80","ft"

I guess what you are telling me then is that this is confined to my machines. I tried it on 2 machines, XP Home & XP Professional, Excel 2000 & Excel 2003.

Thanks.

[Podhorny]

This issue depends on regional settings of the Windows.
Some languages, like French, Italian, German, Portuguese or Czech, use a comma as decimal separator.
So in Excel CSV is as separator used ";" because number 123,45 need to be recognized as one number in
one cell, not as numbers 123 and 45 in two separate cells.
In Excel exist possibility to import ANY combinations of Decimal separators and field separators, they can
be selected during import.

HTH

[Arnold]

Here in the US a CSV file is a (C)omma (S)eparated (V)alues file which is a standard type of file for sharing information between programs. Any program, not just Excel, knows what the delimiters are, and will open it just fine. Maybe in Europe a CSV file means something else, I do not know. Here a file delimited by semi-colons (;) is called a delimited text file not a CSV file.

I am quite sure that I can take the steps to have Excel read the files from PDFX Viewer, and insert the values correctly. I can do this by changing the file to a .txt file, and then set Excel’s delimiters to open it correctly. I know my way around Excel pretty well. I can also change all of the amounts from xxx,xx to xxx.xx like we use here.

I guess I just expected the files to open correctly in the English version of Excel, as English is the default language in PDFX Viewer. I imagine that Acrobat produces a different type of file with different delimiters if the French or German versions are used. I have the trial version installed on one of the computers, maybe I will try that just to see.

I may be the only one using PDFX Viewer for this type of work here in the US. So, I understand that this is not a pressing issue for Ivan and the developers.

[Arnold]

Checked it out. Same file and measurements, 3 different languages using Acrobat Pro 9.3.

English
Label,Type,Value,Unit,
"Distance:",Distance,"2.23","in"

French
Libellé,Type,Valeur,Unité,
"Distance:",Distance ,"2.23","in"

German
Beschriftung,Typ,Wert,Einheit,
"Distance:",Abstand,"2.23","in"

So, it would appear that a CSV file is universal, and is delimited by commas judging by these files.

[Ivan - Tracker Software]

Well, will use regional settings during exporting to CVS, it is not a problem.

[Arnold]

Thank you.

[Arnold]

Working beautifully in 2.046 it seems. Thank you. I am trying to move towards what one person logged in as - "Zero Paper".

[John - Tracker Supp]

Excellent - thanks Arnold