Cannot Filled in Form to Excel

Question

I am running Adobe X Standard.
I am trying to export a PDF form with fillable fields to excel.  
I have tired serveral methods shown on the site.
Every time I get the form saved, the but data that was entered into the form is not exported to excel (or word) .
I have tried these approaches
File -> Save As -> Spreadsheet -> Excel
Highlight table
- Right click
- Copy with formatting
- Export selection as ->
Tools -> Forms -> more form options -> Manage Form Data -> Export Data (fail)
All of the above result in the form structure being saved, but none of the data that was entered
Tools -> Forms -> more form options -> Manage Form Data -> Merge data into Spreadsheet
This sees all of the data and creates a file, but all of the formatting is lost and the file is not usable. 

Answer 1

You can flatten the fields first, which converts the field appearances to regular page contents. It should then be included when exported to XLS. You can do this with PDF Optimizer, Preflight, or JavaScript, but Standard does not include the first two and JavaScript is harder than it should be with Standard, but you can set up a temporary Bookmark and use the following JavaScript as the bookmark action:
// Bookmark action
flattenPages();
Or you can use the same code in the Mouse Up event of a button that you configure to not have a visible appearance.
If you need to do this a lot, you should get the following free JavaScript-based tool: http://www.uvsar.com/projects/acrobat/flattener/