How to Convert PDF to Excel: Export a PDF to XLSX, XLS, or CSV
There are five ways to turn a PDF into a spreadsheet, and they are not equally good. This guide walks through each one, shows which handles scanned pages and wide financial tables, and tells you plainly where each falls apart. The fastest way is the converter on the right.
Works on Windows, Mac, and any browser. Files are encrypted and deleted after conversion.
Drop your PDF here or click to browse
PDF files up to 50MB
First conversion is free. No software to install.
The short answer
To convert a PDF to Excel, upload the file to a converter that reads table structure and download an XLSX or CSV. On Windows you can also use Excel itself: Data, then Get Data, then From File, then From PDF, which works on digitally generated PDFs but not on scans and is missing from Excel for Mac. Adobe Acrobat Pro exports to a spreadsheet through File, then Export To, then Spreadsheet, if you already pay for it. Whichever route you take, a scanned PDF needs OCR, and the first thing to check afterward is whether the amounts arrived as numbers rather than text, because a column stored as text will not sum.
Last updated July 2026
5
Methods compared
XLSX + CSV
Export formats
OCR
Built in for scans
50MB
Max file size
A PDF has no rows. That is the whole problem.
A spreadsheet stores a table as data: this value belongs to that column, in that row. A PDF stores it as ink. What looks like a neat grid on screen is a set of characters placed at coordinates, with lines drawn around them for the benefit of your eyes. Nothing in the file says the number 4,120.00 is the March rent for unit 12B.
So every conversion method is really doing the same job: guessing where the rows and columns were. Some guess by reading the vector lines. Some guess from the spacing between characters. Copy and paste barely guesses at all, which is why a pasted table lands in a single column. And when the PDF is a scan, there are no characters to read either, only pixels, which is where OCR comes in.
Knowing that explains the failure modes you are about to see. A tool that reads lines breaks on borderless tables. A tool that reads spacing breaks when two columns sit close together. Nothing reads a merged header cell correctly, because a merged cell is ambiguous even to a human. Pick the method that matches your document.
Check this before you start
Try to select a word in the PDF with your cursor. If you cannot, the page is an image and you need OCR. Excel and copy and paste will both return nothing.
Tables past about eight columns are where cheap tools start shifting values into the wrong column. Wide financial reports need a converter built for them.
One file is a manual job. Forty files a month is a workflow, and belongs in a batch converter rather than a browser tab.
If the numbers feed a model or a filing, accuracy beats speed. Budget five minutes to check the conversion for errors before you use it.
The five ways to convert a PDF to Excel, compared
Honest version, including where each one fails. Pricing is current as of July 2026 and worth confirming with each vendor.
| Method | Best for | Reads scans | Keeps columns | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online converter | Any PDF, especially scans and wide tables | Yes | Yes | Free first file, then paid plans |
| Excel Get Data From PDF | Clean digital PDFs, on Windows only | No | Usually | Included with Microsoft 365 |
| Adobe Acrobat Pro | Simple layouts, if you already subscribe | Yes | Usually | About $19.99 per month, billed annually |
| Copy and paste | One small table, when nothing else is available | No | No | Free |
| Manual retyping | Nothing. It is slow and it introduces errors | Yes | Yes | Your afternoon |
Short version: if the PDF is a scan or the table is wide, only a real converter or Acrobat will do. Everything else is for tidy, one page tables.
Method 1: convert PDF to Excel with an online converter
This is the method that works on the widest range of documents, because a purpose-built converter reads table structure and runs OCR when it needs to. It is also the only method on this list that does not care which operating system you are on.
Upload the PDF
Drag the file into the box at the top of this page. Scanned pages, multi page reports, and files up to 50MB are all fine. Nothing installs.
Let it read the tables
The engine detects rows and columns, applies OCR to any page that is an image, and reconstructs each table as cells. Most files finish in a few seconds.
Download XLSX or CSV
Take the spreadsheet, confirm the totals match the PDF, and get on with the work. Choose CSV if the data is heading into another system.
Where it wins: scanned documents, wide financial tables, and volume. Where it costs you: the first file is free and sustained use needs a plan, which is a fair trade if the alternative is an hour of retyping. If you convert the same report every month, look at the batch converter instead of doing it one file at a time.
Method 2: Excel Get Data From PDF (Windows only)
Excel 2016 and later on Windows, and every Microsoft 365 subscription on Windows, can pull tables out of a PDF through Power Query. Most people never find the option because it is not on the File menu where you would expect an import to live.
Open a blank workbook, click the Data tab, choose Get Data, then From File, then From PDF. Pick the PDF, and the Navigator pane lists every table Excel thinks it found, usually named Table001, Table002 and so on, plus a Page entry for each page. Preview them, tick the one you want, and click Load.
It is genuinely useful on clean, digitally generated PDFs, and it is free if you already pay for Office. Three catches: it cannot read a scanned page at all, because Power Query has no OCR. It frequently splits one logical table into several detected objects when a report spans pages, leaving you to append them. And Excel for Mac has no From PDF option, which is why Mac users end up converting a PDF to Excel in the browser.
Excel Get Data From PDF, in five clicks
Data tab
Get Data
From File
From PDF, then select the file
Choose a table in the Navigator, then Load
Missing the option? You are on Mac, or on a version older than Excel 2016. Older builds and Mac users need another way to import a PDF into Excel.
Method 3: export a PDF to Excel in Adobe Acrobat
If you already have an Acrobat Pro subscription, the export is three menu items deep. Open the PDF, choose File, then Export To, then Spreadsheet, then Microsoft Excel Workbook, name the file, and save. Acrobat runs text recognition on its own when it detects a scan, so a photocopied page usually comes back with readable text.
Acrobat is solid on simple, well ruled tables. It is less solid on the documents that actually matter to finance teams: wide landscape reports, tables without borders, and statements where a subtotal row interrupts the grid. It also assumes you are paying roughly $19.99 a month on an annual plan for a product whose main job is something else entirely.
Worth knowing before you subscribe for this one feature: our page on Adobe Acrobat PDF to Excel alternatives compares the output side by side, and the best PDF to Excel converter roundup covers nine tools including Acrobat, ABBYY, and the free options.
Method 4: convert a scanned PDF to Excel with OCR
A scanned PDF is a photograph of a document. There is no text in it, only pixels arranged to look like text, which is why selecting a word with your cursor does nothing. Optical character recognition reads those pixels, identifies characters, and rebuilds the text layer. Only then can a converter work out where the columns were.
Practically, this narrows your options to a converter with OCR built in or Acrobat Pro. Excel Power Query and copy and paste both return an empty sheet. Upload the scan, let OCR run, and download the result exactly as you would with a digital PDF.
Then proofread the digits, because OCR is confident even when it is wrong. The characters it mixes up are predictable: 5 and S, 0 and O, 1 and l and I, 8 and B, and the pair rn read as m. On a financial document a single misread digit changes a total, so scan the numeric columns before the figures go anywhere. The full workflow lives on our how to convert a scanned PDF to Excel guide.
Scan quality decides accuracy more than the software does. A 300 dpi scan of a flat page reads cleanly. A phone photo taken at an angle, with a shadow across the middle, will not, no matter which tool you point at it.
Method 5: copy and paste, and why it usually fails
Select the table in your PDF reader, copy, and paste into Excel. Every value lands in column A, one row per line, with the columns separated by nothing Excel understands. You can sometimes rescue it: select the column, choose Data, then Text to Columns, pick Delimited, tick Space, and hope the spacing was consistent. It rarely is, because a PDF pads columns with variable whitespace.
This method is fine for a five row table you can eyeball. It is a bad idea for anything with money in it, since a value that slips one column to the left looks completely plausible in the finished sheet and nothing flags it. If you have already pasted a table and it collapsed, our guide to copying a table from PDF to Excel covers the salvage steps.
It also fails outright on scans, where copying selects an image, and on any table without borders.
Which method should you use?
Match the method to the document, not to the price.
One clean, digital, single page table
Excel Get Data From PDF, if you are on Windows. It is already paid for and it takes five clicks. Fall back to a converter if Power Query splits the table.
A scanned or photographed page
A converter with OCR, or Acrobat Pro. Nothing else can read it. Then proofread the digits before you trust a total.
A wide financial report or statement
A converter built for tables. This is where column drift happens, and where a shifted value quietly corrupts a model. Accuracy is worth paying for, which is the case for an accurate PDF to Excel converter.
Dozens of files, every month
Batch conversion. Doing forty statements by hand is not a workflow, it is a tax on your team. Accountants and bookkeepers usually land on PDF to Excel for accountants for this reason.
What goes wrong after conversion, and how to fix it
Four symptoms account for nearly every complaint about a converted spreadsheet.
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| SUM returns zero | Amounts came across as text, not numbers | Select the column, Data, Text to Columns, Finish. Details in numbers stored as text |
| Values in the wrong column | Column drift on a wide or borderless table | Reconvert with a table-aware tool, then spot check the widest rows |
| Blank rows scattered through the sheet | Page breaks and repeated headers in the PDF | Filter for blanks and delete the rows, per our cleanup guide |
| Empty sheet, nothing extracted | The PDF is a scan and the tool has no OCR | Use an OCR PDF to Excel converter |
How to convert PDF to Excel: common questions
Upload the PDF to the converter at the top of this page and download an XLSX or CSV. The converter finds the tables, keeps each row and column in place, and returns the amounts as real numbers so formulas work immediately. A typical file takes a few seconds. Your first conversion is free.
Excel cannot open a PDF directly. On Windows you can import one: go to the Data tab, choose Get Data, then From File, then From PDF, and pick the table Excel found. On Mac that option does not exist, so you need a converter. Either way the PDF becomes a worksheet rather than opening as one.
Use a converter that rebuilds the table structure instead of dumping text. Column alignment survives when the tool reads cell boundaries rather than spacing, which is why copy and paste collapses everything into one column. Merged headers and footnotes rarely survive any method, so plan to fix those two by hand.
Partly. Excel 2016 and later on Windows, plus Microsoft 365, include Get Data From PDF, which pulls tables through Power Query. It handles clean, digitally generated PDFs reasonably well. It cannot read scanned pages, it often splits a table across several detected objects, and it is not available in Excel for Mac.
You need optical character recognition, because a scanned page is an image with no text layer underneath. Upload the scan to a converter with built-in OCR and it will read the characters, rebuild the grid, and return rows. Always proofread digits afterward, since OCR most often confuses 5 with S and 0 with O.
Use an online converter in your browser, because Excel for Mac has no Get Data From PDF option and no built-in PDF import. Upload the file, download the XLSX, and open it in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets. Nothing needs to be installed and the result is identical to the Windows workflow.
Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro, choose File, then Export To, then Spreadsheet, then Microsoft Excel Workbook, and save. Acrobat runs text recognition automatically on scans. It works well on simple layouts, but it requires a paid subscription and tends to struggle with wide financial tables that span a landscape page.
Three causes cover almost every case. The PDF is a scan and the tool has no OCR, so nothing is read. The table has merged cells or a repeated header from a page break, so rows shift. Or the amounts landed as text, so Excel refuses to sum them. Fix that last one with Data, then Text to Columns, then Finish.
Yes, in two steps. Convert the PDF to CSV or XLSX first, then open Google Sheets, choose File, then Import, and upload the converted file. Sheets has no native PDF import, so the conversion has to happen before the file reaches it. CSV is the safest format for a clean import.
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Convert your PDF to Excel now
Drop a file at the top of the page and download a clean XLSX or CSV in seconds. Your first conversion is free. Need the table only? Try the PDF table extractor. Working in Google's stack? Convert to CSV, then import the PDF data into Google Sheets.