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Revert PDF to Numbers

Avatar Roy Rainford
A few days ago I made a new spreadsheet in Numbers and saved it as a PDF on the desktop. I want to edit it but can't get back to the original. Didn't have Time Machine on and didn't save it to iCloud Drive! Can I revert it to the original in Numbers?

Re: Revert PDF to Numbers

Avatar Tony Still
You can't directly reimport it to Numbers (AFAIK). If there were formulae in the document, they're gone since the PDF is only about the appearance of the document.

Depending on how complex the PDF is, you might be able to cut and paste it from Preview into Numbers. Try 'Select All' then 'Copy' in Preview and then paste into a single (top-left) cell in a new Numbers document and see what you get. If that doesn't work, try copying one row or column at a time (experiment to see which works best).

Or you could taking a screenshot and then use the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Monterey's Photos app to get a copy of the text (just drag across the text in photos to select it, then copy, then paste into Numbers as above). I've no idea how well that might work!

Re: Revert PDF to Numbers

Avatar Mick Burrell
Having saved the pdf, unless you actually chose the Delete option when you closed the Numbers sheet, it should be saved somewhere. Guessing you didn't deliberately save it, try a Spotlight search for Untitled or even Numbers files.

Re: Revert PDF to Numbers

Avatar Roy Rainford
Thanks Tony and Mick. A Spotlight search, using a different title, produced the Numbers sheet. Now edited. Thanks again.
 
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