Cross-posted at:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...b-cf30598f812b
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The short answer is: you get what you pay for. Some PDF converters do a better job of table conversion than others. It is indeed strange that your customer won't supply the table in anything other than PDF format - it suggests they're not concerned with how much you might charge them for the work, in which case, you could buy Adobe Acrobat Pro and charge them the cost. Your other option is to print the relevant pages and use OCR software for the conversion.