Made Good Designs

PDF to Excel Converter

This free PDF to Excel converter finds the tables in your PDF and rebuilds them as real spreadsheet cells in a genuine .xlsx file — one worksheet per table, ready to sort, filter, and calculate. No signup, no watermark, no “2 free conversions” nonsense. Accurate table detection needs more processing than a browser allows, so this tool runs on our own conversion server: your PDF is sent over an encrypted connection, processed in isolated memory, and deleted the instant your Excel file is returned.

Encrypted upload — converted & deleted in seconds

Drop a PDF here

Tables become Excel sheets · up to 30 MB · click to browse

Reliable table detection needs more than a browser can do, so this tool uses our own conversion server: your PDF travels over an encrypted connection, tables are extracted in isolated memory, and the file is deleted the moment the .xlsx is sent back — never stored, logged, or shared. Each detected table becomes its own worksheet, real cells included.

How to convert PDF to Excel

  1. Drop a PDF onto the upload area (up to 30 MB, 200 pages).
  2. Click Extract tables to Excel & download. The tool scans every page for table structures.
  3. The .xlsx downloads automatically, with each detected table on its own worksheet, named by page (Page3, Page3-Table2, …). The result message tells you exactly how many tables were found.

What you get — real cells, honestly described

Every value lands in its own spreadsheet cell, keeping rows and columns intact — not one giant text dump in column A. It’s worth being clear about what conversion can and can’t recover from a PDF:

From your PDFIn the Excel file
Table rows & columns (with ruled lines)✔ Recovered as cells, one sheet per table
Cell text, numbers, currency values✔ Carried over as text — reformat as numbers in Excel if needed
Merged cells & multi-line cells◑ Content preserved; merges may unfold into separate cells
Formulas✖ PDFs only store results, not formulas — no tool can recover them
Colors, fonts, borders✖ Values only; styling is not reconstructed

Tables drawn without ruled grid lines are harder to detect. If none are found, the tool automatically falls back to extracting the text line by line into rows (splitting columns on spacing), and tells you it did so — you’ll get usable data either way, it may just need a quick tidy-up.

The whole document is converted — every page of a multi-page PDF is scanned for tables (up to 200 pages), not just the first. The output is a standard .xlsx that opens in Microsoft Excel 2007 or newer, Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc, and Apple Numbers.

Scanned PDF? Use OCR instead

This tool reads the text layer of a PDF. If your PDF is a scan or photo of a document, there is no text layer to read — the tool will detect this and point you to our free Image to Text (OCR) tool, which reads scanned pages in 30+ languages and can export Excel directly.

Where’s the server? An honest privacy note

Most of our 40+ design tools run 100% in your browser. Reliable table detection doesn’t fit in a browser, so this tool uses our own single-purpose conversion server — located in Germany, inside the EU — not a third-party API. Your PDF travels over HTTPS, is processed in memory-backed temporary storage (it never touches a permanent disk), and is deleted in the same request that returns your spreadsheet. Popular converters typically advertise deletion “within an hour” or “within six hours”; here there is nothing left to delete seconds after you convert. No storage, no logs, no account — nothing to tie a file to you. That matters more than usual for this tool, because the PDFs people convert to Excel are so often bank statements and financials.

Common uses

  • Getting bank or card statements into a spreadsheet for budgeting and reconciliation
  • Pulling data tables out of reports, invoices, and price lists sent as PDF
  • Rebuilding a spreadsheet when someone “helpfully” sent you the PDF export
  • Collecting figures from published research or government PDFs for analysis

Frequently asked questions

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

Yes — this is one of our few tools that genuinely needs one, and we say so upfront. It goes to our own conversion server over an encrypted connection, is processed in isolated memory, and is deleted the moment your .xlsx is sent back. No storage, no logs, no third parties.

Why are my numbers text instead of numbers?

Values are extracted exactly as printed — including currency symbols and thousands separators — so they arrive as text. Select the column in Excel and use Data → Text to Columns or multiply by 1 to convert. This is deliberate: silently guessing number formats corrupts data like phone numbers, IDs, and European decimal commas.

My table wasn’t detected. Why?

Detection relies on the ruled lines that mark table boundaries. Tables laid out purely with whitespace can be missed — in that case the automatic text fallback still extracts every line into rows, splitting columns on wide gaps, which usually needs only minor cleanup.

Can it convert a scanned PDF?

Not directly — scans have no text layer. The tool detects this and tells you, instead of returning an empty file. Run the scan through our free OCR tool, which reads 30+ languages and supports Excel export. On most big-name converters, OCR for scanned PDFs is the paid “Premium”/”Pro” feature — here that route is free too.

Can I get everything on one worksheet instead of one per table?

The tool keeps each detected table on its own sheet so nothing gets jumbled together — sheet names tell you the source page. If you want one combined sheet, select-all and paste each sheet under the last; because they’re real cells, columns line up cleanly.

Does it work on phones and tablets?

Yes. It’s a plain web page — upload from any modern browser on iPhone, iPad, Android, or desktop. No app to install.

Is it free? Any limits?

Completely free — no watermark, no signup, no ads, and no per-day conversion caps (one well-ranked competitor allows a single free conversion per day). Files up to 30 MB and 200 pages, plus a generous hourly rate limit that keeps the server fast for everyone.

Related design tools & guides