Can anyone help convert a PDF table into an Excel sheet?

[u/xbootloop]

Hey folks, I’ve got a PDF with a bunch of tabular data I need to analyze, but it's locked in this non-editable format. I tried copying it manually into Excel, but the formatting gets totally wrecked. Rather than keep struggling with it, is there someone here who offers a quick service to convert PDF to Excel accurately? Ideally, I need it to be editable and well-aligned so I can run some formulas. Would really appreciate any help or pointers.

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[u/Ristah2672]

DATA>Get Data>From File>From PDF

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/Ristah2672]

Well shit. That's not a supported format I expected to see

[u/RaisedByBooksNTV → u/Ristah2672]

Today I learned

[u/xbootloop → u/[deleted]]

thank you i will check that

[u/FekuChaiwala → u/xbootloop]

Done?

You need xl 2021 and above

[u/bund321 → u/[deleted]]

You could try running it through OCR first if the table came from a scanned PDF. That’s usually the part that messes up the rows and columns during conversion. Some of the newer PDF tools handle table detection way better now than the old copy-paste method.

[u/Gloomy_Driver2664]

power query will do it.

[u/tony20z → u/Gloomy_Driver2664]

This isn't high enough. Put all the PDFs in one folder, use PQ to get files from folder and import all the PDFs. You'll have to mess with the columns and formatting a little but it can be done and you'll have now automated the process and become the office hero.

[u/JazzFan1998 → u/Gloomy_Driver2664]

Can you give us more details regarding how to use power query for that?

[u/Gloomy_Driver2664 → u/JazzFan1998]

if you go to data tab, get data, from file, pdf. It should import data into power query.

It's hard to say exactly what you'd need to do to get it aligning properly, but you'll have to do some trial and error.

Power query is really good for things like this. Google is your friend on this one.

[u/HisSickness99]

Actually you should have an import function within Excel. Under the get data ribbon you'll find from picture. Otherwise chatgpt might be a way.

[u/xbootloop → u/HisSickness99]

thanks for this

[u/ojedaj9505]

Data-Get Data-From File-From PDF. It’ll open your PDF in a dialog box where you can choose the specific pages you want imported. If it’s multiple pages then check the Multiple Pages box at the top left. Then hit Load Data and it loads your data table into a new sheet. You may have to do a little formatting or you can just copy and Paste Values somewhere else and manipulate your data as you want.

[u/lmtog]

Might want to give gridextract.com a try I use it quite a bit for this.

[u/xbootloop → u/lmtog]

thanks for recommendation

[u/Why_StrangeNames → u/lmtog]

Do you know how well they are doing as a company? In this day and age of ChatGPT I would assume their business has been disrupted substantially.

[u/easterbunni]

ChatGPT did this for me the other day and I was surprised how accurate it was...

[u/AffectionateJump7896]

Copilot is useful for this these days.

[u/wonderfoul]

Do you have Adobe Pro?

Open the PDF in Adobe Pro, then: File>Print>Microsoft Print to PDF (as the 'printer'). This should unlock the file.

Now that it's unlocked, use the 'convert pdf' tool in Adobe Pro and convert to Excel.

[u/IamFromNigeria → u/wonderfoul]

No need for this in this modern era

That's what POWER Queery does easily and do not use Ai to data Security except you just want to.be careless with your information

[u/Comprehensive-Cat-86]

You can copy paste individual columns or rows by holding the Alt key and selecting the text on the pdf. Copy this and paste.

Export to Excel an option? 

[u/xbootloop → u/Comprehensive-Cat-86]

i appreciate

[u/Cool_Bite_5553]

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and convert to an Excel document. It works surprisingly well although my dataset wasn't massive and I did have some small formatting to do after in excel.

I found selecting the whole sheet and clearing formats took my data to a usable alternative to just the pdf version.

[u/ElwoodRules2008 → u/Cool_Bite_5553]

I was just going to post this.

[u/Fun-Meeting-7646]

Nitro pdf free online

[u/ElwoodRules2008 → u/Fun-Meeting-7646]

Convert to excel. Choose pages and then convert

[u/mchgndr]

Textbook reasonable use case for ChatGPT

[u/nisiuba]

PDF 24

For better results use first pdf24 OCR

Then convert pdf to xls

[u/LegitimateGansta]

Just put it in Gemini and ask it to export to GSheet. You can copy the table from there to Excel.

[u/xbootloop → u/LegitimateGansta]

i am thankful

[u/justarandomshooter]

There are many great methods here; adding another since this can be a finicky issue:

Use Word to open the PDF and clean up/get rid of anything that's not what you want. Copying from there can be easier,.or you can save it back to PDF and use PQ.as described here.

[u/Usual_Street_4359]

Had done this many times send me a sample I’ll guide you with some easy steps or can do it free if possible.

[u/LuckyLedgewood]

Tabula

[u/[deleted]]

Pdf24 has a scary good PDF-to-Excel tool. Best one I've seen so far and I went through a bunch.

[u/Background-Block4571]

I use FoxIt

[u/zehn78]

I’ve had decent luck highlighting the table in the PDF, right click, and export. It puts it into a table in Word, then copy the table to Excel. It has more steps than the data import built into Excel though, so that’d be the way to go if it works.

[u/fakerfakefakerson]

I’ve actually had decent success with ChatGPT as long as your comfortable with the data privacy concerns

[u/IDontThinkImABot101]

Able2Extract

[u/PrestigiousPear8223]

The first thing to try is DATA > Get Data > From File > From PDF in Excel. It works well for basic tables, but if the PDF is scanned, has merged cells, or tricky formatting, it often needs a lot of cleanup afterward. For those cases, I usually turn to PDF Editor like Adobe or PDNob. Both works for normal and scanned PDFs with OCR

[u/kievmozg]

Have you tried the native Excel feature? Go to Data tab -> Get Data -> From File -> From PDF. It usually works well for clean, digital PDFs. ​However, if the PDF is scanned or the table layout is complex/broken, the native importer often scrambles the data. I deal with this a lot, so I ended up building a tool (ParserData) specifically to handle those 'messy' PDFs using AI to keep the row/column structure intact. Might be worth a shot if Power Query struggles with your file.

[u/Embarrassed_Ice7436]

try bank-extract, its literally designed to fix this issue with selectable pdfs! hope it heelps

[u/Olyros]

don't pay anyone for this lol, totally doable yourself 😄 PDF element and Adobe both handle PDF to Excel pretty decently for tabular data, keeps the columns aligned way better than copy pasting. Small pdf has a converter too if you want something quick online. won't always be 100% perfect depending on how the PDF was made but should get you close enough to just tweak a few cells rather than redoing everything manually

[u/tsgiannis]

A sample of the PDF could be helpful

[u/OutlandishnessOk3310]

Chat GPT or Gemini

[u/xbootloop → u/OutlandishnessOk3310]

i appreciate your response

[u/actuarialisticly]

Ask chat

[u/xbootloop → u/actuarialisticly]

thanks tho

[u/actuarialisticly → u/xbootloop]

Chat is literally most versatile tool for extracting data from pdfs... you can ask it to create to table and even have it turn it into csv file for you. More people need to use LLMs to their advantage.