When you are a “work from home” dad, you can see a lot of patterns. Here is one.
My kids come home from school by noon (they are too young for full day school). Right after lunch they watch their favorite cartoon program, Team Umizoomi, in which few fictional characters go about solving problems in the Umi city using maths. Milli, one of the characters is an expert with patterns. She solves problems by identifying patterns and unleashing pattern power.
Here is a fun example of the pattern power. (It has Chef Gordan Ramsey too, which is sweet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JTxJiCQEMc
Team Umizoomi & Excel Fill – How do they link up?
Here is how they link up.
Imagine you have a workbook where you need to follow a pattern, like one of these:
You too can unleash the pattern power. What more… you needn’t break in to a song sequence every-time you unleash the power.
How to use Excel’s pattern fill?
Here is an example. Let’s say you want 2 different formulas & 1 blank cells in a sequence.
- Write the first formula in cell 1
- Second formula in cell 2
- Leave the 3rd cell blank
- Select all 3 cells
- Drag to fill
See the screencast aside to understand this concept.
Bonus tip: You can use this technique horizontally too.
Where to use this pattern power?
Here are few uses for pattern fills:
- Dashboards & reports where you need to show some information but space it with blanks for readability
- Apply different formatting to different rows / columns
- Set conditional formatting only to every nth cell
- Format (or write formulas for) weekdays & weekends differently
I use pattern power often when designing dashboards or complex reports.
What about you?
Do you use pattern power? Tell us in the comments where you would use them.
I must go now, I hear the umi alarm. Looks like the kids are back from school.
7 Responses to “Extract data from PDF to Excel – Step by Step Tutorial”
Dear Chandoo,
Thank you very much for this and it is very helpful.
However, all the Credit Card Statements are now password protected.
Please advise how can we have a workaround for that
Hello sir,
How to check two names are present in the same column ?
Thanks and Regards
Hi, Thank you for the great tip. One problem, when I click on get data >> from file, I don't see the PDF source option. How can I add it?
I tried to add it from Quick Access toolbar >>> Data Tab, but again the PDF option is not listed there.
I am using Office 365
Hi, Thank you for your video. I see you used the composite table, but I when I load my pdf, it does not load any composite table. It has 20 tables and 4 pages for one bank statement. I have about 30 bank statements that I want to combine. Your video would work except that I can't get the composite table and each of the tables I do get or the pages does not have all the info. what to do?
Dear Chandoo,
How do we select multiple amount of tables/pages in one PDF and repeat the same for rest of the PDF;s in the same folder and then extract that data only on power query.
Thank you
Hi, Thank you for your video. I see you used the composite table, but I when I load my pdf, it does not load any composite table. It has 20 tables and 4 pages for one bank statement. I have about 30 bank statements that I want to combine. nice share
One bank statement takes up 20 tables and four pages in this document. I need to consolidate roughly thirty different bank statements that I have. Your video would be useful if I could only get the composite table, which I can't for some reason, and each of the tables or pages that I can get is missing some information.