It can be done if your pdf is not a scan and well organized. You should be able to highlight all and simply copy the pdf to paste in your excel sheet. This doesnât always work - I donât know all of the specifics of why or why not. But give it a try and even if you need to do some reformatting it could save you some serious time typing.
I've found that a good system works in most cases. You have a better chance of going over your work if you do it with pen and not with computer. And if by lucky chance the PDF is a scan, then you can use Photoshop or other image manipulation software to make it look like something that it is not — like in some images on this page. Or your software of choice can get the job done. In some cases, you have a few PDFs to go over. So it's not really necessary to use a software when doing this with hand tooling. However, if you do an entire book in a week, then that can be a time-consuming process. It could take hours or days, you know what I'm saying. But then there are times when you don't want to go through all PDFs. For me, that would be the case. Sometimes, I.