Converting Bid Tabs from PDF to Excel

willsulesky · 2025-08-06T17:53:13+00:00

There was an error rendering this rich post.

I am struggling with converting certain tables and/or bid tabs from PDF into Excel. I have tried the entire document and just the page region, but when I export the data, the formatting is all screwed up. I can't seem to get the tables to import neatly. Any suggestions?

Find more posts tagged with

Import/Export

Accepted answers

All comments

Isaac.Harned

Method 1: Run OCR, Select text from table, paste into Excel. There will be a "CTRL" context that popos up in the bottom right of the data when you do. It gives you some paste options, but the last item is "Use Text Import Wizard". Go through the options here using spaces as delimiters, should pretty much be "Next", "Next", "Finish". That will separate what you have pasted into columns.

Method 2: If method one fails, it means that the embedded font is screwy somehow, whether it is a security feature, corruption, or the font was never actually embedded. Best way for these is to reprint the pdf as an image and run ocr again. Once you do that, you can try to export again using any or all of the previous methods. Be careful with this as some of the values may come out slightly off (0's are usually replaced with O, etc.)

If these dont work, I am out of options.

Quick Links

Recently Asked Questions

Word Bluebeam Plug-in Error
Curious if others have experienced this error when trying to PDF from the Bluebeam Add-in within Word and if you have any fixes: Version: 21.6.1 Operating System: Windows 10
Converting Bid Tabs from PDF to Excel
I am struggling with converting certain tables and/or bid tabs from PDF into Excel. I have tried the entire document and just the page region, but when I export the data, the formatting is all screwed up. I can't seem to get the tables to import neatly. Any suggestions?
Cannot apply comments to measurement markups
Hi. I've been banging my head against this one for a long time and it seems to be an intended feature. For all of my measurement markups, it seems like I can't add or modify comments. It will only prepopulate the comments field based on what I select to show in caption under properties. In practice what this means for me…
Count in different multiples
I'm working on a workflow in Bluebeam Revu where I need to tally items in multiples of 3, even though all materials are ultimately ordered in single units. The challenge is that many items I mark up are typically grouped in threes — for example, a single instance on the drawing represents three units of material. I want to…
Question from Our Community - Studio Session Random Bug
One of our reviewers is having a problem that pops up randomly. The problem that happens is as follows and is totally random and occurs when reviewing any session(s): Extracting sheets with comments, pasting images, and details in various sheets. Once pasted images and text has been added to various sheets the reviewer…
Measurements
Every Time I load a document, it says this document has a protected scale and won't let me measure anything. Anyone have any suggestions. Thanks
Edit markups
Hi, just wondering how I can edit markups/takeoffs that I made at my home office and view and change at my work office? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I have purchased Revu last week, i want to upgrade to core ?
Not sure if there is an option to upgrade my purchase , as i purchase the basic one but need core because i need to measure perimeter and more advanced tools etc.. ? Anyone know if its possible to upgrade and how ?
I have been getting a blue screen overlay every time i want to use the scale or measuring tool ?
Page Navigation Bar - Where did the navigation arrows go?
Where did the default page navigation arrows go? How do we get Revu to go back to the default page navigation interface? What did we do to make this change to the Revu UI? Default UI Current UI