How to extract a table from a PDF to Excel or CSV
Draw a box around a table in a PDF, fix the columns, and export Excel and CSV files that keep IDs like 00123 intact. Free and private.
Quick answer
Use PDF Tables to Excel & CSV: draw a rectangle around the table, adjust the column lines, correct any cell in the editable grid, then export XLSX and CSV. Values with leading zeros stay as text, and nothing is uploaded.
Steps
- Open PDF Tables to Excel & CSV and choose your PDF.
- Go to the page with the table and drag a rectangle around it.
- Select Detect columns, or drag the red lines to the gaps between columns.
- Fix any cell in the grid. Tick Join wrapped lines so multi-line descriptions stay in one cell.
- Export. The Excel and CSV files both come from the grid you see.
Scanned PDFs
If the page is an image there is no text to read. Use the Read this page with OCR button, then check every value — recognised numbers can be wrong.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my leading zeros kept?
The XLSX stores values such as 00123 as text. A CSV keeps the characters, but Excel may show them as numbers when it opens the file.