"arno" wrote...
....
However, what you should do first is to ask for an excel file
containing what you need. If someone was able to send to you the info
as pdf then there must be the same info as excel-file, word-file or
whatever available. Whenever you communicate with somebody about
delivering data, always ask for data in an excel file, access mdb,
textfile (comma separated...) or whatever file that can be used as a
_database_ and never accept something (stupid) like pdf which is as
valueable as a fax. Work smarter not harder!

In many situations, only PDF files are distributed because they can't be
changed, either inadvertently or intentionally, without considerable effort.
XLS files, on the other hand, can be changed easily because Excel provides
only laughably weak worksheet and workbook security.

Internally, I agree that XLS files or some other more usable format should
be distributed. However, for outside parties it's often if not usually the
case that PDFs make more sense due to the relatively stronger document
security features.

That said, unless the PDF file contains scanned images, it's possible to use
public domain tools to convert the PDF file into PostScript, and PostScript
into plain text. There's even a straight PDF-to-plain-text converted (or
was) on Simtel. It helps to know scripting languages to deal with the plain
text output.