PDF Table Extractor
To pull a table out of a PDF, add it, enter the pages the table is on, check the preview and download an Excel workbook or CSV. A table spanning many pages becomes one sheet with repeated headers removed, and figures such as 1,234.50 or (45.00) become real numbers. Scanned tables cannot be read. Nothing is uploaded.
Updated
How to use the PDF Table Extractor
- 1Add a PDF that contains a table.
- 2Enter the pages the table is on, such as 3-7, or leave it blank to scan every page.
- 3Check the preview, and move the column sensitivity slider if columns are split or merged.
- 4Download the table as an Excel workbook or a CSV file.
How it works
A PDF does not store tables. It stores pieces of text at coordinates that only look like rows and columns. The tool reads every text fragment with its position, groups fragments on the same baseline into rows, and finds the left edges that many rows share — those become the columns.
Long reports usually split one table over several pages and repeat the header at the top of each. With One sheet selected, the pages you chose are stacked into a single table, and when a page opens with the same header row as the first page, that repeat is removed, so the result can be sorted and filtered straight away. Choose Sheet per page to keep them apart instead.
Figures such as 1,234.50, $980 or (45.00) are converted to plain numbers a spreadsheet can add up, with brackets read as negative. Values with leading zeros, such as account codes, are left as text so the zeros are kept, and ambiguous formats such as 1.234,50 are not guessed at.
This works on PDFs that contain real text — exports from accounting systems, spreadsheets and reporting tools. A scanned table is a picture, with no text to read.
Tips and common mistakes
- Select only the pages that hold the table. Cover pages, notes and totals printed below the table turn into stray rows.
- Compare the first few rows with the PDF before you start working with the data, paying attention to where each column begins.
- Account codes and other values with leading zeros are kept as text so the zeros survive. Convert them to numbers in your spreadsheet only if you need to calculate with them.
- Bracketed amounts such as (45.00) become negative numbers, which is the accounting convention. Check that this matches what the document means before you add up a column.