Convert PDF to Excel Online
We detect tables directly in your PDF's real text layer and rebuild them as a genuine Excel spreadsheet — all tables on one sheet in page order, with numbers, dates, currency, and percentages preserved.
📊 Text-based PDFs only — no OCR, no scanned pagesDrag & drop your PDF here
or click to browse from your computer
Max 100MB per upload
Text-based PDFs only: tables are detected from your PDF's real text layer — bordered and borderless tables both work, across as many pages as it takes. Scanned or image-only PDFs aren't supported (no OCR).
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Automatic table detection
Bordered and borderless tables are both detected, across every page, with no manual selection needed.
Real typed values
Numbers, currency, percentages, and dates come out as actual Excel values with matching formatting, not plain text.
Completely free
No sign-up required — convert files up to 150 pages and 100MB at no cost.
How to Convert PDF to Excel
- Upload your PDF — drag and drop it, or browse your files.
- Click Convert. Every page is scanned for tables — both ruled/bordered tables and borderless tables aligned by whitespace.
- Every detected table lands on one sheet in the output file, stacked in the order it appears in your document.
- Download your .xlsx file, ready to open in Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice Calc.
Supported PDFs
PDF to Excel works only on digitally generated, text-based PDFs — documents that already contain selectable text, like reports exported from software, spreadsheets saved as PDF, or invoices generated by an application. If you can already select and copy text from the PDF in a normal viewer, it will work here.
Unsupported: Scanned PDFs
This tool does not support scanned PDFs, photographed documents, handwritten pages, or any PDF made entirely of images — and it does not use OCR (optical character recognition) to work around that. If your PDF has no selectable text at all, you'll see:
"This PDF appears to be scanned or image-based. PDF to Excel currently supports text-based PDFs only."
If you need to work with a scanned document, try PDF to Word instead — that tool includes OCR for scanned pages (though it extracts tables as plain text, not structured spreadsheet cells).
What Gets Preserved
- Rows and columns — the table's structure is rebuilt exactly, without breaking columns apart.
- Numbers — written as real numeric values, not text.
- Currency — amounts like
$1,250.00come through as typed numbers with currency formatting. - Percentages — values like
12.5%come through as typed percentages. - Dates — unambiguous date formats are converted to real Excel date values.
- Multiple tables and multiple pages — every table lands on one sheet, stacked in order, however many pages your document spans.
Anything ambiguous — text that only partly resembles a number or date — is left as plain text rather than risk guessing wrong.
Benefits of Extracting Tables to Excel
- No manual retyping. Copying a table out of a PDF viewer usually breaks columns apart or merges them — this rebuilds the real structure instead.
- Ready for analysis. Once your data is in Excel, you can sort, filter, chart, or run formulas on it immediately.
- One file per document, organized clearly. Multiple tables land on one sheet in a single workbook, stacked in reading order, not scattered files.
File Size, Page Limits, and Encrypted PDFs
| Limit | Details |
|---|---|
| File size | Up to 100MB |
| Page count | Up to 150 pages per document |
| Password-protected PDFs | Not supported — remove the password first |
| Scanned / image-only PDFs | Not supported — no OCR |
Privacy & Processing
Conversion happens on our server — your file is handled in memory, and CurePDF's own application code doesn't write it to disk. No account or sign-up is required.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I convert scanned PDFs?
No. PDF to Excel only works on text-based PDFs that already have selectable text. Scanned pages, photographed documents, and image-only PDFs aren't supported.
Do you use OCR?
No. This tool reads the real text layer already inside your PDF — it never runs optical character recognition on an image.
Is it free?
Yes — no sign-up required, and there's no charge for converting documents up to the size and page limits above.
Are my files secure?
Yes — conversion happens in memory on our server, and CurePDF doesn't write your file to disk at the application level. No account is required.
How are tables detected?
Automatically — both bordered (ruled/grid) tables and borderless tables aligned by whitespace are detected on every page, no manual selection needed.
What if my PDF has multiple tables?
Every detected table lands on one sheet in the output file, stacked in the order it appears with a blank row between each — even if the tables span multiple pages of the source PDF.
Will numbers and dates come through as real values?
Where a cell is unambiguously a number, currency amount, percentage, or date, it's written as a real typed Excel value with matching formatting, not plain text. Anything ambiguous is left as text to avoid guessing wrong.
Is there a page limit?
Yes — up to 150 pages per document.
Is there a file size limit?
Up to 100MB per file.
Can I convert a password-protected PDF?
Not yet — encrypted PDFs aren't supported.
What happens if no tables are found?
You'll get a clear message telling you no tables were detected, instead of a blank or broken Excel file.