[reportlab-users] Tables in Acrobat

Andy Robinson reportlab-users@reportlab.com
Thu, 19 Feb 2004 02:38:33 -0000


> Hello,
> 
> I generate a pdf-document containing a table with reportlab.
> After that I open the pdf in Acrobat.
> Everything looks very nice.
> Then I activate the table selection tool and want to mark the table.
> But it is not working.
> I am using Acrobat 6.0 Standard (version 6.0.1 03.11.2003). All updates
> applied.
> Office XP SP2 is installed.
> 
> Can anybody help me to make the table markable by the table 
> selection tool?
> I want to be able to extract the table to MS Excel.

THere is no support for tables in the PDF specification;
we just generate lots of lines and text in the correct place.
So, I have no idea how the table selection tool works in
Acrobat 6.0 or what we could do to support it.

I presume that some extra metadata is stored when Acrobat 6.0
distills a Word or HTML document...

If anyone else knows how this works, please let us know!
Otherwise I can't see how we would ever support this.


- Andy Robinson