Can I convert a scanned PDF to Excel?

Only if the converter includes OCR (optical character recognition). Standard converters work on PDFs with selectable text — the kind you get from saving a document as PDF. Scanned PDFs are essentially images; you need an OCR tool like Adobe Acrobat Pro, Google Drive's built-in OCR, or Tesseract to extract the text first.

Will my PDF tables look the same in Excel?

Simple, well-structured tables usually convert cleanly. Complex layouts — merged cells, nested tables, multi-line headers — may need manual cleanup. The more consistent your PDF table structure is, the better the result.

Is it possible to convert a password-protected PDF to Excel?

You need to remove the password protection first. If you know the password, open the PDF in any reader that supports editing (Adobe Acrobat, Preview on Mac) and save a copy without the password. Then convert the unprotected file.

After converting PDF to Excel, how do I convert the spreadsheet back to PDF?

Use the free Excel to PDF converter at excel-to-pdf.app. Drop your XLSX file onto the tool, adjust page size and orientation if needed, and download the PDF. The whole process runs in your browser — no signup, no upload to a server.

How to Convert PDF to Excel — 4 Free Methods (2026)

PDF files are great for sharing finished documents, but terrible when you need to work with the data inside them. You cannot sort a column, build a chart, or run a formula on a PDF. To do any of that, you need to get the data into Excel first.

The difficulty depends on the PDF. If it contains selectable text (you can highlight and copy words), extraction is straightforward. If the PDF is a scanned image, you will need OCR first — that is a separate step covered briefly at the end.

Method 1: Import Directly in Microsoft Excel

Excel 365 and Excel 2019+ can pull data from PDF files without any add-ins. This is the cleanest option when you have Excel installed.

Open Excel and go to Data → Get Data → From File → From PDF.
Select your PDF file. Excel scans it and shows a Navigator pane listing every table and page it detected.
Pick the table you want (or select multiple tables). Click Load to import directly, or Transform Data to clean it up in Power Query first.
The data lands in a worksheet as a regular table — ready for formulas, sorting, and filtering.

When to use this: you have Excel 365 or 2019+, the PDF contains well-structured tables, and you want to keep everything inside the Microsoft ecosystem.

Limitations: older Excel versions (2016 and earlier) do not have this feature. It also struggles with PDFs that use complex layouts, headers spanning multiple columns, or tables split across pages.

Method 2: Use Google Sheets (Free, No Desktop App)

Google Drive can extract text from PDFs using its built-in OCR, then you copy the result into Google Sheets. This works on any device with a browser — Chromebooks, tablets, shared computers.

Upload your PDF to Google Drive (drag it into drive.google.com).
Right-click the file and choose Open with → Google Docs. Drive converts the PDF to a Google Doc, preserving tables as best it can.
Select the table in the Doc, copy it (Ctrl+C / ⌘C), and paste it into a new Google Sheet.
Clean up any misaligned rows or extra whitespace. Download the Sheet as XLSX via File → Download → Microsoft Excel (.xlsx).

When to use this: you do not have Excel, the PDF is short (under 10 pages), and you need a quick, free solution.

Limitations: table detection is basic. Multi-page tables often break into separate chunks, and merged cells do not always survive the conversion.

Method 3: Free Online PDF-to-Excel Converters

Several free web tools specialize in extracting tables from PDFs. The general workflow is the same across all of them:

Upload your PDF to the converter.
The tool detects tables and converts them to an XLSX or CSV file.
Download the result.

Popular options include Smallpdf, ILovePDF, and PDF2Go. Most offer a limited number of free conversions per day.

Privacy note: your file is uploaded to a third-party server. If the PDF contains sensitive data (financial records, personal information), check the service’s privacy policy or use an offline method instead.

Method 4: Use Python for Batch or Automated Conversions

If you regularly convert PDFs to Excel — say, monthly financial reports — a short Python script can automate the process. The two most popular libraries are tabula-py (wraps the Tabula Java library) and camelot-py.

import tabula

# Extract all tables from the PDF
tables = tabula.read_pdf("report.pdf", pages="all")

# Save the first table to Excel
tables[0].to_excel("output.xlsx", index=False)

Install with pip install tabula-py openpyxl. You will also need Java installed since tabula-py calls Tabula under the hood.

When to use this: you have many PDFs to process, you want repeatable results, or you need to integrate the conversion into an existing data pipeline.

Tips for Cleaner Conversions

Check if the PDF has selectable text. Open the PDF, try to highlight a word. If you can, the data is extractable. If you cannot, the PDF is a scanned image and needs OCR first.
Simpler tables convert better. Single-header tables with consistent column widths give the best results. If you control the source, avoid merged cells and multi-line headers before saving to PDF.
Split large PDFs. If your PDF is 100+ pages, split it into smaller chunks before converting. Most tools handle shorter documents more accurately.
Verify numbers after conversion. Dates, currencies, and percentages sometimes lose their formatting during extraction. A quick spot-check saves trouble later.

Which Method Should You Pick?

	Excel Import	Google Sheets	Online converter	Python
Cost	Requires license	Free	Free (limited)	Free
Install needed	Excel 365/2019+	None	None	Python + Java
Batch support	One at a time	One at a time	Varies	Yes
Privacy	Local	Uploaded to Google	Uploaded to third party	Local
Table detection	Good	Basic	Good	Excellent
Best for	Single files	No desktop app	Quick one-off	Automation

Need to Go the Other Way?

Once you have finished editing your spreadsheet, you may need to share it as a PDF again — for a client, a manager, or an archive. The free Excel to PDF converter on this site handles that in seconds. Drop your XLSX file onto the tool, pick your page size and orientation, and download the PDF. Everything runs in your browser — no file uploads, no signup, no watermark.

You can also read our step-by-step guide on how to convert Excel to PDF for three different methods depending on your setup.