PDF to Excel

📖 What this does

A supplier sends a quotation as a PDF and you want those numbers in Excel; a bank statement or a timetable needs breaking into rows before you can count anything. Screenshotting it and retyping is the slow way, and copy-paste usually dumps a whole row into one cell. This tool reads the PDF's text layer directly in the browser. Once it has the coordinates of every text run it groups runs that share a vertical position into rows, then splits each row on the horizontal positions to recover the columns, writes the grid out as a real XLSX file, and also offers CSV export or a plain comma-separated copy.

✨ Features

• Row and column recovery works from coordinates rather than counting spaces, so tables with spaces inside cells, mixed Chinese and Latin text, or right-aligned numbers keep their column structure instead of collapsing into one cell.
• Two ways to handle columns: split by position using global column boundaries, or keep each line as a single cell, which suits PDFs that are prose rather than tables.
• Row tolerance and column tolerance are set separately. Loosely spaced tables want a larger column tolerance; if two lines keep merging into one, lower the row tolerance.
• Numbers can be written as real numeric cells so you can sum them or pivot on them straight away. Turn it off when you do not need it, otherwise long identifiers turn into scientific notation.
• Page ranges accept forms like 1-3,5, so you can pull only the pages you need out of a long report, and there is an option to put each page on its own sheet.
• Export covers XLSX and CSV, plus a copy button that produces properly quoted CSV text which any spreadsheet will split correctly on paste.

🛠 How to use it

1. Press Choose PDF or drop a file on the dashed box. Convert stays disabled until the page count appears in the status panel.
2. Fill in the page range if you want to limit it - 1-3,5 takes the first three pages and the fifth. Leave it blank for everything.
3. Pick a column mode. Regular tables want split by position; plain paragraphs where each line is a sentence want keep each line as one cell.
4. Press Convert. The first fifty rows appear below. If columns land in the wrong place, adjust the column tolerance and run it again.
5. When it looks right, press Download XLSX for a spreadsheet, or Download CSV / Copy as text when plain text will do.

⚠️ Before you rely on it

• Text layer only, not images. Scans and photographed pages carry no text coordinates, and you will be told there is nothing to extract. Those need OCR first, which this tool does not do.
• Hard layouts need manual tuning. Tables spanning pages, merged cells, vertical writing and rotated pages all come apart or run together. Check the first rows after every export.
• Numeric storage has a cost. ID numbers, account numbers and codes with leading zeros lose those zeros once they become numbers. Untick the numeric option for that kind of content.
• Tolerance is global. One PDF containing both tight and airy tables cannot be satisfied by a single setting - convert it in batches by page range.
• Big files cost memory. Working through hundreds of pages in a browser tab gets sluggish; splitting by page range is steadier. Everything happens locally and nothing is uploaded.