On Saturday we went to Columbus zoo, apart from enjoying the lions, penguins, birds, I have also learned 5 simple yet effective lessons in visualization.
1. Design your charts for kids – assume your audience knew bare minimum and curious
Above shown is a typical Zoo-mate info dashboard that you can see next to any animal in the Zoo, All the information that a kid needs to know to enjoy the reptile is shown there, a photo, whether the snake is venomous, what it eats, how endangered it is on a gradient scale and where its found usually.
2. Highlight information that is crucial, leave the rest
This is “How to read a Chameleon” next to Chameleon cage, quickly tells how to understand what you are seeing. But if you need to know more about the colors, the research behind it, there is a bigger section beneath this.
3. Use images, examples that your audience can relate to
This is the “measure your ecological footprint” exhibit. They have actually shown various sizes of shoes to compare ecological footprint of various Nationals – India, China, World average, US (not shown) so that kids can easily understand the point.
4. Remember, your audience is there to look at you, listen to your story, the chart is just an enabler
This is outside the area where tigers are kept. Obviously very few people stopped at this infographic, people are all curious to see the tigers. But this chart does tell a very good point about declining tiger habitat across the world, they have used 2 colors per each tiger to convey the point. No gradients or anything… just 2 colors, one for where tigers thrived earlier, and one for where they are today, and the point is obvious for even a kid.
5. Finally, have fun
Outside the building where reptiles were kept, I found this. Having fun in what you do is as much important as telling your story, selling your ideas.
Happy charting 🙂
PS: excuse the poor quality of images, it was dark in most of the places.
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.