Several good advices, but missing the real problem here. Of course you CAN extract text from a pdf and you can extract a table from excel. A few lines of perl or your favourite language and you have it.
Data are worthless if you can't trust it. Plain CSV are easy to read but easy to change, even on the fly. Pdf can be changed also, but is not so easy and if someone makes a subtile change in a number the error don't propagates by all the pages reaching the totals like in excel. Excel macros/formulas can be a source of headaches.
So to share your data use a format that:
1-you can trust (reasonably).
2-all your other reasons go here...
And if this format is full of nested tables, and you find difficult to extract the info from those tables, don't throw out the format, ask for help instead.
PDF can support passwords, is very compact, not so easy to change on the fly and can be encrypted. Maybe not the best, but not the worst of the available tools, in my opinion.
Data are worthless if you can't trust it. Plain CSV are easy to read but easy to change, even on the fly. Pdf can be changed also, but is not so easy and if someone makes a subtile change in a number the error don't propagates by all the pages reaching the totals like in excel. Excel macros/formulas can be a source of headaches.
So to share your data use a format that: 1-you can trust (reasonably). 2-all your other reasons go here...
And if this format is full of nested tables, and you find difficult to extract the info from those tables, don't throw out the format, ask for help instead.
PDF can support passwords, is very compact, not so easy to change on the fly and can be encrypted. Maybe not the best, but not the worst of the available tools, in my opinion.