4: The PDF Spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are usually created in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) format. There are a lot of advantages to creating, transporting, and using the spreadsheet in that format. The primary advantage of spreadsheets in the .xls format is one of universal understanding. The second advantage is the xlstab control characters are not lost when looking at a spreadsheet as an .xls document.
But people frequently use the Adobe .pdf format to read and transport the .xls spreadsheet. Many think that more convenient to save or store the spreadsheet in a .pdf format.
For most purposes, storing the spreadsheet in a .pdf format is acceptable. But for the purpose of transforming the spreadsheet into corporate data, the .pdf formatting of a spreadsheet is not ideal.
The reason why .pdf spreadsheets are not very helpful for creating corporate data is fairly straightforward. Remember that when a spreadsheet is stored in an .xls format, it contains an internal view including special...
