Acrobat Xi "Find" & "Replace" discussion.

[PJL41]

My credit card statements come with dates in the format "dd/mm/yy".

I ultimately want the transactions to be saved as an access data base file.

To do this I export the cropped PDF transactions to an XLSX file.

However XL interprets the dates as YY/MM/dd.

The solution is to "find and replace" the dates in the PDF transactions as dd/mm/yyyy.

However when I type "/16" into the find box it finds nothing because the greyed out, prechecked "find whole words only" cannot be unchecked.

Tried full acrobat search which works fine - but there is nowhere to replace wit "/2016".

I would appreciate some help if someone has an answer

[try67]

Don't try to do this in the PDF file. Export the data as a plain-text file and then it will be much easier to manipulate it in such a way using a plain-text editor that supports RegExp replacements, like Notepad++.

[Karl Heinz Kremer · Accepted solution]

You may not have to do anything: In Access, on the Import dialog, there is an "Advanced" button, that brings you to a dialog for import options. Here you can specify the data format. That should allow you to prevent the problem in the first place.

[PJL41]

Thank you Karl, you helped solve my problem; saved me hours of trying to find a work around.

To clarify how it works:-

1 Crop the data needed in the PDF file

2 Delete the unwanted pages

3 Export the cropped data to Excel; BUT save as HTML (Saving as XLSX is no good as the damage is already done)

4 HTML reads the date as Text

5 Access will then allow me to format the text as D/M/Y and also delete the 4 digit year.

Again, thank you very much; appreciated.