In the nutshell, the conversion involves exporting the data first into a Word document first, and then copying it to an Excel workbook. Please remember that this method works only for PDF documents created electronically. any PDF viewer, Microsoft Excel and Word. In this case, a PDF is just a static picture, and in order to export it into an editable Excel sheet, special OCR software is required.įor occasional PDF to Excel conversions, you may not want to bother searching for a special tool and do the job with what you have at hand, i.e. If you want to import such PDF to Excel, you can do this manually or use some third-party PDF to Excel converters or Adobe software.Ī PDF file can also be created by scanning some paper document or by using some other device that takes an image of the document and then stores it as a PDF file. If a PDF document was obtained from an electronic source such as a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet, it contains text characters that can be read and interpreted by Microsoft Office applications as well as by various PDF converters. Someone may think that all PDF files are essentially the same. Convert an image (scanned) PDF into ExcelĬhoosing the right method for PDF to Excel conversionĬhoosing the proper method for converting a certain PDF to Excel depends on how this or that PDF document was created.Desktop software to convert PDF to Excel.Convert a PDF file to Excel through Word.Choose the right method depending on the PDF file type.And this tutorial will teach you how to import a file from PDF to Excel in just a few minutes. So, if your task implies re-arranging the data for further analysis, you will have to either bug the correspondent for another file, or convert the PDF document into some editable format. However, PDF files are purposed solely for viewing data and not for manipulating it. If you ask someone for some information, and if that someone is a well-meaning person, there's a good chance that you will get a neatly formatted PDF document with the requested data accompanied by tables, graphics and diagrams for your perusal. The PDF format that allows presenting documents independently of the user's software, hardware or operating system has already become a de facto standard for electronic file exchange. The article explains how to export different PDF files to Excel manually or using free online converters, and how to choose the conversion method best suited for a given file type.