There is a text select tool in Acrobat Reader, it's on the main toolbar at the top. There are some limitations with it, but it works OK. You can copy / paste the selected text.
If the text is in two columns in the pdf file, the text select tool selects line 1 of column 1, then line 1 of column 2, rendering whatever you paste fairly useless!
With Excel also, if there is a blank cell in a column, it'll paste nothing for that cell, so moving everything to the right one cell over, but only for that line. As long as the amounts of data you're pasting aren't too big, you can paste to Notepad, do a bit of formatting, then save as a text file. When you open the txt file in Excel and choose your separator, it shouldn't be too bad.