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name: adobe-anyexcel description: "MANDATORY when an Excel/XLSX task's source content is an uploaded PDF — including when the PDF's text or tables are already extracted and visible in the conversation. Covers: 'convert this pdf to excel/xlsx', 'pull the tables from this pdf into a spreadsheet', 'turn this pdf into a spreadsheet'. Requires viewing THIS file before defaulting to hand-authoring a spreadsheet with openpyxl/pandas. Route to adobe-anypdf's pdf_export (target_format: xlsx) first. Do NOT use this file when there is no PDF source — a from-scratch spreadsheet request, or editing an existing .xlsx/.csv, is the public xlsx skill's job, not this one." license: Apache-2.0 allowed-tools: adobe_mandatory_init pdf_export metadata: version: 1.0.0 visibility: public surface: [claude]

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

Step	Tool	Notes
Initialize	adobe_mandatory_init	Required before pdf_export
Convert PDF to XLSX	pdf_export	target_format: xlsx

Workflow

Step 0 — Initialize Adobe Tools

Call adobe_mandatory_init before calling pdf_export.

{ "skill_name": "adobe-anyexcel", "skill_version": "1.0.0" }

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-anypdf skill, call adobe_mandatory_init, then pdf_export with target_format: xlsx. Do this before opening the public xlsx skill or writing any openpyxl/pandas code.
• 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 public xlsx skill.

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_export fails 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 the xlsx skill.
• The user has already seen the pdf_export output 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.