I may be asking a dumb question or going about this wrong but I'm not sure what to do here.

So right now, I receive an estimation from one company in a PDF. It has a bunch of fields such as customer name, product, address, etc. Then I type that data and put it into Excel, where I add additional data that I have. From there I have a second PDF which has form fields that I fill with the data of the Excel spreadsheet.

My problem is with the first PDF that I get from this other company, unless I am doing something wrong I am unable to get that first PDF to show the data as fields. If I convert the first PDF into an Excel then the table data is very messy.

The amount of typing or copy and paste that it's not hard but it is time consuming. What is the best way for me to go about doing this? I've been Googling things but I'm not sure the right words of action I'm looking for.

I hope this all makes sense, but if not please ask questions and I'll do my best to try and clarify further.

I'm running Windows 10 now, and I understand I can still use Emacs, but I'm seizing the opportunity to give it a shot to other tools. In part because I'm not sure how "native" my Emacs setup would feel on Windows, but also because I reached a point of "tinkering fatigue" and I want things that require less maintenance.

I used Org Mode a lot and was thinking if there is something with a similar feel that is more plug-and-play. Programs like Notion, Obsidian, and Roam Research are like that, I think.

These are some of my requisites:

• FOSS
• markdown or org markup
• I don't wanna pay for anything, ever
• plug and play
• text-based
• easy export and backup
• keyboard-centric or keyboard-friendly
• can be used offline
• local database can be synced using Dropbox
• Emacs-like and/or Vim-like keybindings