
I'm going to give you the Excel answer, and you should be able to automate that.
If you still have trouble, at least you can do this part in a few mouse/keyboard clicks, and we can work more on automating it.
Select column A
On the Home Ribbon, Find & Select -> Go to Special -> Blanks
Send Keys ={Up}{Control}({Enter}) ;so, example ={up arrow} should create the formula =A1 (in cell A2); Control + Enter copies that formula to everything selected (which is all blank cells in column A)
Select Column A; Copy; Paste Values (you only need this step if you wish to override the formula)
Now column A is fully populated and you can vlookup or pull it into PAD as a full dataset w/o blanks.
Best of luck!