How do I import a multi page pdf file into a CALC sheet?

How do I import a multi page pdf file into a CALC sheet?

First answer: You can’t. All you can edit is the original document from which this print-out has been generated and then create a new PDF from the modified document. PDF is just an electronic print-out with similar restrictions as a paper print-out.
Second answer: Use a software able to extract the textual content from the PDF and see, what can be done with the pure text.

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Thanks Villeroy

Taking your advice I opened GIMP and converted a page to png image format. I could then insert the page into CALC with Insert>image drop down from CALC’s top menu bar. I’m still trying to get a multipage pdf into png as a single file…but that’s another help site.

No general answer possible: See PDF as a container for a programming language to place objects on a page. So you have to find out first, what you have. I have a big archive of pdf files generated by scanning documents. So the files are photos of pages.
Other may contain fonts/letters and even words. You can try as a fitst step to select pars of contents and see what you can copy and paste. My ā€œphotos of pagesā€ would need an OCR-software to access text or figures.
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Then you need to tell, what you expect from import to Calc. A picture of a page in a Cell a @koyotak seems to understand? Or does your pdf contain some table?
EDIT: There is pdfSAM or pdfTK to split pdf-files.
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Just to mention it: pdf can be opened in Draw, but this is a graphics oriented approach, usually not usable as ā€œimport-filterā€ for Calc.

There are 2 types of PDF.

  1. The PDF you get when you export something printable like an office document. It contains graphic elements and text. In a PDF reader, you can select text and copy to clipboard.
  2. The PDF you may get from a scanner. It contains one bitmap per sheet. Here you can’t select any text. If I recall correctly, the Tagged Image File Format can store multiple pages in one image file.

I think I have a non editable pdf type and I am only looking to put it into CALC as an image in source support of data used in the main spreadsheet sheets. I’ll keep playing with input/output formats within GIMP to get the desired 6 page in one image file that I’m trying to achieve.

Just store the PDF in the same directory as the spreadsheet document and use cells with hyperlinks opening the right PDF when you click on it. You may just store the file name in one cell, say Picture_0001.PDF in cell A1, and then =HYPERLINK(A1) returns a clickable hyperlink to open Picture_0001.PDF.

take a screenshot of the pdf-window as a picture.

Works for ā€˜screen size readable’ pdfs but can’t seem to make progress with a multipage pdf. I’m going down the convert pdf to png route at the moment.

You can import a pdf-file into LO-DRAW, than from LO-DRAW per OLE-Object to LO-CALC. I have tested one sheet, I don’t know if more sheets are possible. Try those.

The png file format cannot handle more than one page per definition. You will have to capture the pages of the pdf one by one into different png files. ā€œDrawā€ can help you with that, or gimp, or quite few others as well.