Adobe AnyExcel
This is a routing file, not a standalone authoring tool. It exists for exactly one decision: is this XLSX task's source content a PDF?
Tool Reference
Workflow
Step 0 — Initialize Adobe Tools
Call adobe_mandatory_init before calling pdf_export.
Router
- Source is an uploaded/attached PDF (even if its text or tables are already visible in the conversation as extracted content) → this is a PDF-to-XLSX conversion. Check the
adobe-anypdfskill, calladobe_mandatory_init, thenpdf_exportwithtarget_format: xlsx. Do this before opening the publicxlsxskill or writing anyopenpyxl/pandascode. - No PDF involved — building a spreadsheet from scratch, cleaning a
.csv, editing an existing.xlsx, building a financial model or chart — this file has nothing to add. Go straight to the publicxlsxskill.
When to still prefer hand-authoring over pdf_export
pdf_export reproduces the PDF's tables and layout as a spreadsheet — it does not restructure data, build formulas, or clean up inconsistent tables. Prefer building the spreadsheet by hand with the xlsx skill instead, even when the source is a PDF, if:
- The user wants the extracted data cleaned, restructured, or turned into a model (formulas, pivot-style summaries) rather than a literal table dump.
pdf_exportfails with a clear transient error — retry once. If it still fails, is unavailable, or the Adobe connector isn't reachable at all, fall back to hand-authoring with thexlsxskill.- The user has already seen the
pdf_exportoutput and asked for something different.
When in doubt, running pdf_export first and showing the result costs little — a direct conversion is a fine starting point to compare against, and the user can then ask for cleanup if the table structure didn't carry over well.
Known failure mode — do not repeat
This file exists because of a reproduced, confirmed failure in the equivalent PPTX case: given a PDF with its text already extracted into the conversation, plus a request to convert it, the model has repeatedly defaulted straight to hand-authoring with the target format's own skill — skipping pdf_export entirely, even when adobe-anypdf's own MANDATORY router already covered the request. The same pattern is expected to apply here. If you notice yourself about to call openpyxl, pandas.to_excel, or build a spreadsheet from visible PDF text by hand, stop and check pdf_export first.