The annual report nobody opens
Forty pages of performance, of which six numbers matter to the people you sent it to. One portrait sheet with the six, and a link to the full PDF underneath, gets read far more often than the attachment did.
PDF to infographicForty pages in.
Forty pages in.
One sheet out.
Upload the report. It gets read end to end — headings, tables, footnotes and the numbers buried in the prose — and comes back as a single sheet carrying the findings that were worth the forty pages.
PDF, Word, CSV and spreadsheets · Free to try · Your file stays in your account
Annual review · 2026
Six numbers from
forty pages
- Revenue
- +24%
- Retained
- 91%
- Return
- 3.1x
Revenue
Retained
Return
Illustrative · source: uploaded document
What gets read
Six things it takes out of a document
- Headings and section order
- Used to work out what the document thinks is important, before any of the prose is read closely.
- Figures in sentences
- A number written into a paragraph is extracted with its unit, its base and the year attached to it.
- Tables
- Rows and columns come through as data that can be ranked, summed or plotted, not as a picture of a table.
- Bullet findings
- Lists of conclusions are strong candidates for the sheet, because someone has already done the ranking.
- Executive summaries
- Weighted heavily. If a document has one, it usually contains the sentence the sheet should be built around.
- Footnotes and sources
- Read so the sheet can carry a source line rather than a bare figure with no provenance.
Four documents worth converting, and what each becomes
Portrait · statistic sheet
A whitepaper you want shared
A whitepaper is a lead magnet that requires ten minutes before anyone can tell whether it was worth downloading. A summary sheet is the trailer — the finding, the method in three steps, and the chart that carries the argument.
A research paper for a general audience
Findings, sample size, method and limitations, in the order a non-specialist needs them. Keep the limitation on the sheet — a summary that quietly drops it is the reason people distrust research graphics.
A case study or client deck
Before, what changed, after, and the one figure that proves it. Sized square or wide so it drops straight into a proposal, a slide or a post without being re-cut.
Five things to check before you publish it
Summarising is compression, and compression loses things. This is the list worth running your eye down every time, whoever or whatever made the summary.
- 1Every figure on the sheet appears in the PDF, with the same unit and the same period.
- 2Percentages still say what they are a percentage of.
- 3Any caveat the document attached to a headline number is still attached to it.
- 4The source line names the document and its date.
- 5Nothing confidential from the source has been promoted onto a sheet you intend to share publicly.
Uploading, in detail
How long can the PDF be?
Long documents are read in full, but the more a document covers the more you should aim it. A hundred-page report will produce a better sheet if you say what the sheet is for — “make one about the financial results” — than if you leave it to pick.
Does it work on a scanned PDF?
Only if the scan has a text layer. A PDF that is really a photograph of pages has nothing to read, and nothing to convert. Run it through an OCR tool first, or paste the passage you care about as text instead.
Does it use the charts already in my PDF?
No — it redraws them. A chart lifted out of a report is a low-resolution rectangle that carries the report’s styling. The underlying figures are re-plotted in your colours at the size the new sheet needs.
Can I convert one PDF into several infographics?
Yes, and for anything over about ten pages that is the better approach: one sheet per section or per finding, rather than one sheet trying to hold a whole report.
What happens to my file after it is read?
It is used to build your piece and stays in your account. Your documents are not published, not shown to other users, and not sold on. See the privacy policy for the full statement.
Which other file types can I upload?
Word documents, plain text, CSV files and spreadsheets, alongside PDFs. You can also paste text directly or hand over a URL.
The report is already written
Upload it and see which six numbers it thinks were the point.
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