How do I get a table out of a PDF into Excel?

Last reviewed: October 20, 2026 · Markdown version

Three routes, depending on what you have. On a computer, Excel's PDF connector reads the tables inside a PDF and lets you pick one; Acrobat can convert the whole PDF to an Excel workbook; and on a phone, Excel's Data from Picture turns a photo or screenshot of a table into cells you can check before inserting. In our experience copy and paste is the route to avoid, because it tends to land a whole table in one column.

Excel on a computer: the PDF connector

Microsoft's documentation for the connector lists Excel among the products that have it, and describes the steps: select the PDF option, "Browse for and select the PDF file you want to load", then "In Navigator, select the file information you want, then either select Load to load the data or Transform Data to continue transforming the data in Power Query Editor." The function behind it "Returns any tables found in a PDF file", and by default "similar tables on consecutive pages will be automatically combined into a single table" (Power Query PDF connector, Microsoft Learn, read 20 October 2026). In Excel, the PDF option sits among the data sources you can import from; Microsoft's page names the connector, not the exact menu, so look for it under the Data tab's Get Data commands.

Microsoft is frank that results need tidying: "In cases where multi-line rows aren't properly identified, you might be able to clean up the data using UI operations or custom M code" (the same page). Rows whose text wraps onto two lines are the usual casualty, so check those first.

Acrobat: convert the PDF to a workbook

Adobe's steps: "Select Convert from the global bar", "Select Microsoft Excel from the left pane and then select XLSX", then "Select Convert to XLSX" and save. Under Settings you can choose to "create a worksheet for each table, page or the entire document", set decimal and thousands separators, and use "Text Recognition Settings: Recognize text images if needed and set the language" (Convert PDFs to Microsoft Excel formats, Adobe Acrobat Help, read 20 October 2026). That last setting matters for scanned PDFs.

On a phone: Data from Picture

Microsoft's phone steps: "Open Excel on your phone or tablet and tap Insert > Data from Picture", frame the data "until you see it surrounded by a red border", and capture. Excel then flags anything it was unsure of: "Tap Ignore to move on to the next issue or tap Edit to correct the issue", and "Press Insert when you're done". The Microsoft 365 app does the same through Actions, then Image to Table (Insert data from picture, Microsoft Support, read 20 October 2026). For a PDF on your phone, our suggestion is to show the table full-screen and capture it with Excel's camera, or screenshot it if your version offers a picture-file option. Two limits from the same page: the image should be "head-on and focused", and "Only the following character sets are supported", a list of English and twenty other languages, mostly European.

Scanned PDFs

If the table is in a scan, there is no text for the PDF connector to read. Microsoft's connector page does not mention scanned files either way (the Power Query PDF connector page, read 20 October 2026), so treat a scan as needing a text layer first; making a scanned PDF searchable covers that, and checking for a text layer takes a few seconds. Acrobat's text-recognition setting and Excel's Data from Picture both work from the image instead.

Before you trust the numbers

Our checklist, whichever route you use:

Totals: add up a column in Excel and compare it with the total printed in the PDF.
Separators: a comma read as a decimal point turns 1,250 into 1.25. Acrobat's numeric settings exist for this reason.
Headers: a header split over two lines often arrives as two rows.
Dates: check that day and month have not swapped.