UK workers struggle with PowerPoint, PDFs & spreadsheets

Adobe Acrobat has published research showing that almost a third of UK professionals lack confidence in core digital workplace tasks. The survey of 2,000 UK adults identifies presentations, PDFs and spreadsheets as the main problem areas.

Creating PowerPoint presentations emerged as the most difficult task, with 32% of respondents saying they did not feel confident doing it. Extracting or working with content in PDFs followed at 30%, while 29% said they lacked confidence using spreadsheets.

This sits alongside a strong view that spreadsheet use is central to office work. Some 42% of respondents described spreadsheets as the most essential digital skill in today's workplace, even though nearly a third said they were not comfortable carrying out that task.

Skills divide

The data also points to a clear age gap in digital confidence. Among workers aged 18 to 34, 77% said they felt confident editing documents, 76% converting files and 73% extracting content from PDFs.

Confidence was markedly lower among over-55s. In that group, 47% said they felt confident editing documents, 45% using spreadsheets, and 43% extracting content from PDFs.

The research also found differences in how workers seek help. Half of those over 55 said they would ask a colleague or friend if they were struggling with a digital task, while 40% of those aged 18 to 34 said they would look for the answer online.

Sector gaps

Results varied by industry, with some sectors showing more pronounced weaknesses in everyday software use. In fast-moving consumer goods, 50% of professionals said they lacked confidence editing or formatting documents.

Workers in arts and culture also reported notable gaps. Almost two in five, or 39%, said they struggled with spreadsheets, while the same proportion said file conversions were a challenge.

Online collaboration tools were another area of concern across the wider workforce. Thirty per cent of respondents said they lacked confidence using platforms such as Teams, Slack and Google Docs, placing those tools level with PDF extraction among the weakest areas in the survey.

File conversion tasks were close behind, with 28% saying they did not feel confident handling them. Signing and managing digital documents was cited by 27%, while 26% reported low confidence in editing or formatting PDFs.

PDF strain

The study also linked the survey responses to broader search behaviour around document tasks in the UK. Searches for terms including compress PDF, merge PDF and edit PDF were among the most common PDF-related queries.

One of the fastest-rising searches was fill in PDF, which rose 23% over three months. Other notable shifts included sign PDF, up 23.5%, while edit PDF drew 60,000 monthly searches and remove pages from PDF reached 37,000.

These patterns suggest document handling remains a practical issue for many office workers, particularly where PDF workflows are involved. The data also indicates that routine tasks such as editing, converting and signing files continue to present difficulties even as they become standard parts of day-to-day work.

The figures come as employers across sectors face pressure to raise digital literacy levels in roles that increasingly depend on software fluency. The survey suggests gaps persist not only in more advanced systems but also in established office tools that have been part of workplace technology for decades.

PowerPoint, for example, has long been a standard tool for internal updates, sales pitches and client presentations, yet it ranked as the single biggest challenge in the research. That puts presentation creation ahead of spreadsheets and PDFs, even though the latter are often treated as routine administrative tasks.

The findings also show that digital confidence does not map neatly to a task's perceived importance. Spreadsheets were viewed as the most essential skill, but they still ranked among the areas where workers felt least prepared.

For employers, the results highlight a mix of broad and sector-specific training issues, from basic document editing to more specialised file management. They also underline a generational divide that could affect productivity and support needs within mixed-age teams.

Adobe Acrobat said the research was designed to identify the workplace tasks where employees feel least confident, with PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations and file conversions among the areas showing the widest gaps.