PDF to Excel

It looks like a table, but it is not one

There are no cells inside a PDF. There are numbers placed so the eye sees columns — and the program has to infer them.

Try a statementIt comes back as a sheet

The conversion recovers the grid from spacing and ruled lines. In reports generated by a system, where every row looks the same, it is right almost always. Statements assembled by hand are another story.

Where it lands without trouble

Ruled tables, identical rows, one value per cell. Bank statements, sales reports and warehouse printouts usually come back ready to calculate with.

Where you have to look

Merged cells

A heading stretched over three columns has no equivalent in the raw positions, so it lands in the first of them.

Numbers stored as text

A space as a thousands separator, or a decimal comma, can make the sheet treat a number as a string. You see it immediately: the sum does not work.

Wrapped rows

A long product name broken across two lines may be read as two rows. That is the most common fix after a conversion.