Convert PDF to Excel

When do you need to convert a PDF to Excel?

When figures you need to work with arrive locked inside a PDF: a supplier's price list, a bank statement, or a stock report from accounting software. This tool pulls the text of each page into spreadsheet rows so you can sort, filter and calculate instead of retyping.

What the tool does exactly

It reads the text layer of the PDF and rebuilds the table from the position of each piece of text: rows from their height on the page, columns from their horizontal extent. It does not see the table's ruling lines, so always check the result:

• Rows: text pieces sitting at roughly the same height on the page (within about 5 points) are grouped into one row, from top to bottom.
• Columns: text that sits under other text on the page goes into the same column, and an empty cell in the PDF stays empty in Excel, so values don't slide over. Pieces that touch within one word are joined into one cell. On a page whose text is mostly Arabic or Hebrew, the order is reversed: the rightmost column of the PDF becomes column A, and if most pages are like this the workbook opens in right-to-left view.
• Sheets: every PDF page becomes its own sheet named Page 1, Page 2 and so on. A table that runs over several pages is not joined into one sheet.
• Values: numbers such as 45, -300 or 1,250.00, and the European style 1 250,00 or 1.250,00, become real numbers, and percentages such as 12% become fractions (0.12). Numbers starting with a zero, such as phone numbers, stay text so the zero isn't lost, as do numbers followed by a currency word (45 MAD). Formatting, colours, borders and merged cells are not reproduced.

How to convert a PDF to Excel

1. 1
   Choose a PDF or drag it onto the box.
2. 2
   Click "Convert to Excel Now". The status line shows which page is being read.
3. 3
   Click "Download Excel (.xlsx)". The file keeps your PDF's name with an .xlsx extension.
4. 4
   Open it in Excel, LibreOffice or Google Sheets and compare each sheet with the original.

Cleaning up the result

• Percent values arrive as fractions: apply the percentage format to the column to show 12% again. Numbers that stayed text because of a currency word can be fixed by removing the word with Find and Replace.
• A cell whose text wraps onto two lines in the PDF arrives as two rows: move the second line up into the cell above and delete the extra row.
• The right-to-left view applies to the whole workbook: it is switched on only when at least half of the pages are mostly Arabic, so in a mixed file some sheets may open in the "wrong" direction. Use "Sheet Right-to-Left" on Excel's Page Layout tab to switch a sheet back. Arabic tables laid out left to right also get their columns reversed.
• If you only need the words, PDF to Text or PDF to Word may be a better fit.

Limitations

• No OCR. A scanned PDF or photographed page has no text layer, and the tool tells you it found no extractable text instead of creating a file. Read our OCR guide for options.
• Text that is not part of a table (titles, paragraphs, page numbers, chart labels) ends up in the sheet too and has to be deleted.
• One file at a time. Large PDFs depend on your device's memory.

Where is the processing done?

Reading the PDF and writing the spreadsheet both happen inside your browser, using pdf.js and SheetJS. Your statement or price list stays on your device during the whole conversion.

PDF to Excel: frequently asked questions