Easy Way to Import Character Sheet (.pdf) to Fantasy Grounds

**Neepster** · October 4th, 2019, 04:51

I'm running a one shot in a couple days that I am going to use Fantasy Grounds to help manage and keep moving (lots of combat) for 3 players. One of the players made their character in DNDBeyond so I just used ai6k.com/dndbeyond/ to convert that to xml and import it. Another player is very analog and did all his on paper so I bit my lip and re-created that char on DndBeyond and did the same thing. The final guy did his on Orcpub and sent me a pdf. I'd really like to avoid recreating his char again in DNDBeyond... is there no way (no tool?) to convert a PDF character sheet directly to something that Fantasy Grounds can import? I have tried searching but am getting nothing. I assume that either means the answer is no or else my searching sucks. Can someone please confirm which it is?

**LordEntrails** · October 4th, 2019, 05:08

Welcome to the forums.

No. The structure of PDFs are not standard or always the same like an export from DDB is. Depending on the tool that authored the PDF, the unlerlying markup could be format in probably hundreds of different ways.

That said, you would probably spend more time trying to convert it than you would just recreating it in FG or DDB

**dberkompas** · October 4th, 2019, 05:19

Glad to hear you're getting good use out of my DnDB converter!!

Dave

**Neepster** · October 4th, 2019, 05:23

Yes that thing rocks! Thanks for that!

**Neepster** · October 4th, 2019, 05:25

Originally Posted by LordEntrails

Welcome to the forums.

No. The structure of PDFs are not standard or always the same like an export from DDB is. Depending on the tool that authored the PDF, the unlerlying markup could be format in probably hundreds of different ways.

That said, you would probably spend more time trying to convert it than you would just recreating it in FG or DDB

Yeah .pdf format really is a sh*tshow isn't it... Still there ought to be a way to copy and paste the text from the file into a text file or something and then import that?

**dberkompas** · October 4th, 2019, 05:25

If there's something you'd like to see added, or missing, or needs to be fixed/updated, please use the 'Contact' menu item so I have a record of it.

Thanks!

Dave

**LordEntrails** · October 4th, 2019, 17:02

Originally Posted by Neepster

Yeah .pdf format really is a sh*tshow isn't it... Still there ought to be a way to copy and paste the text from the file into a text file or something and then import that?

Sure, copy the text (if the PDF allows it) and paste it to Notepad++ or a similar text editor. Clean up any junk, then copy and paste it into FG. Note if you do this for things like spells or feats or actions, then they will not be linked to the PHB spells/etc or their inventory items. They will not have any automation of actions etc either.

Truly, if you have the official (or fully functional) DLC resources, it is 100 times easier to just create the character from scratch in FG. If you know what you want a character to be, it takes less than 5 minutes to build one from scratch in FG. Their are a couple of YouTube videos showing this if you really want to see it. Check out Robe2e/Rob Twohy 's channel. Not sure who did the others.

**notrealdan** · October 4th, 2019, 18:41

If you really don't want to enter the character directly into FG, you could recreate the character in DDB and then import it into FG the way you did the others.

But really, it's not hard to make a character directly in FG from scratch. When I build a character in FG, I keep this article handy to remind myself of the ideal order for adding things to the sheet:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/...6D_Class_Packs

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