PDF to Excel

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Extract tables from a PDF into an Excel spreadsheet.

or drop PDF here

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Turn the tables in a PDF into a real spreadsheet, in your browser, without uploading the file. PDF to Excel reads where each piece of text sits on the page, groups the fragments into rows and columns from their positions, and writes an .xlsx with column widths that fit. Values come across as plain content — fonts, colours, images and charts are not carried — so it is the right tool for a price list or a statement, and the wrong one for a designed report where the styling is the point.

How to use PDF to Excel

Click "Select PDF file" and choose the PDF with the tables.
Click "Convert to Excel" and wait while each page is read.
Download the .xlsx and check the first rows against the page. Some values may arrive as text, which Excel marks with a small green triangle — select the column and use Convert to Number if you need to calculate with them.

Who it is for

PDF to Excel is for figures you can only get as a PDF: a bank statement you want to analyse, a price list from a supplier, a table in a published report, an invoice you need to enter into a ledger. Retyping a table is error-prone and slow, and this is the tool that avoids it.

How it works

Text fragments are placed by position. Fragments whose baselines sit within a fraction of the glyph height of each other form a row, and the horizontal gaps between them become candidate column boundaries.
A boundary only becomes a real column when several rows agree on it, which is what stops one wide gap in a single row from splitting the table.
Column widths are set to fit the data, and each page becomes its own sheet.

What it cannot do

Everything arrives as content, not as formatting — fonts, colours, images and charts are not carried into the workbook.
Numbers can arrive as text, especially with currency symbols or thousands separators. Excel's Convert to Number fixes a column in one step.
A two-column page can be read across the columns rather than down each one when the gutter is narrow relative to the text.
Scans need OCR PDF first, and even then the recognition has to be good for the columns to be found.

Frequently asked questions

How does it decide what a row and a column is?

From position, not from drawn lines. Fragments whose baselines sit within a fraction of the glyph height of each other are one row; the horizontal gaps between them become column boundaries, and a boundary only becomes a real column when several rows agree on it. That is why one wide gap in a single row does not split the table.

Will the numbers work in formulas?

Not always straight away. Text that looked like a number on the page can arrive as text, especially with currency symbols, thousands separators or a non-breaking space. Excel's Convert to Number fixes a column in one step, and the values themselves are intact.

Why did a two-column page come out as one column?

Because a PDF stores text one fragment at a time with no idea of columns. If the gap between the columns is small relative to the text size, the tool reads across the page rather than down each column. Cropping the PDF to one column at a time is the reliable workaround.

Are images and charts included?

No. Only text is read, so a chart does not appear in the workbook and an embedded image is lost. If a chart holds the data you need, the PDF is the wrong source — go back to the original spreadsheet.

Is my file uploaded?

No. Pages are read by pdf.js and the workbook is built with SheetJS inside your browser, so the document never leaves your device.