Will this correctly extract any table from a PDF?

Not always — it uses a position-based heuristic (same line = row, wide horizontal gap = new column) that works well for simple, grid-aligned tables but can misread complex or irregular layouts.

Will this work on a scanned PDF?

No — a scanned page has no real text layer to read, only pixels, so it produces empty rows; you'd need an OCR tool for that instead.

Are the numbers extracted as actual numbers?

No — every cell is extracted as plain text, so you may need to convert number-like cells to Excel's numeric format before using them in formulas.

PDF to Excel Converter

Extract a PDF's text into rows and columns of an Excel (.xlsx) file, directly in your browser.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

Drop a PDF here or click to upload

What this tool does

Extracts every page's text along with its on-page position, groups items that share a line into a row, and groups items separated by a wide horizontal gap into separate columns — then saves the result as an .xlsx spreadsheet.

How to use it

Drop or select one PDF file. The tool analyzes each page's text positions and generates a ready-to-download .xlsx file, with a blank row inserted between each original PDF page.

Worked example

Upload invoice.pdf (a page with a simple two-column list of item names and prices) and you get invoice.xlsx, with each item name in column A and its price in column B, one row per line.

How rows and columns are detected

This is a position-based heuristic, not real table recognition: text on roughly the same vertical position becomes one row, and within a row, a gap wider than a small threshold between two pieces of text starts a new column. It works well for simple, grid-aligned tables and lists.

When this won't work well

Complex layouts — multi-column articles, PDFs with merged or rotated table cells, or text that isn't aligned into a clean grid — will extract into rows and columns that don't match the visual table structure. Review the output and adjust it by hand for anything beyond a simple table.

Limitations

Scanned PDFs (pages that are images of text, with no real text layer) produce empty rows, since this tool doesn't perform OCR. Every value is extracted as plain text — numbers are not converted to Excel's numeric type, so formulas referencing them may need reformatting first.

Privacy

Both reading the PDF and generating the spreadsheet happen entirely in your browser, using pdf.js for text extraction. Your file is never uploaded to a server.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this correctly extract any table from a PDF?: Not always — it uses a position-based heuristic (same line = row, wide horizontal gap = new column) that works well for simple, grid-aligned tables but can misread complex or irregular layouts.
Will this work on a scanned PDF?: No — a scanned page has no real text layer to read, only pixels, so it produces empty rows; you'd need an OCR tool for that instead.
Are the numbers extracted as actual numbers?: No — every cell is extracted as plain text, so you may need to convert number-like cells to Excel's numeric format before using them in formulas.

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