I get monthly reports as PDF and have to retype the tables in Excel. Copy and paste puts everything in one column. Is there a better way?
How can I get a table from a PDF into Excel with the columns intact?
Resolved
PDF
KV
Kevin Vargas October 29, 2026
2 replies
1,677 views
Reviewed by moderators
2 participants
If you have Excel in Microsoft 365, use Get Data.
1. Open Excel and choose Data > Get Data > From File > From PDF.
2. Select the PDF. The Navigator window lists the tables and pages it found.
3. Preview a table, select it and click Load, or Transform Data to clean it first.
Power Query keeps the column structure, and you can refresh the query when next month's PDF replaces the old one in the same folder.
Acrobat can also export a PDF straight to an Excel workbook. This works only for PDFs with real text. A scanned PDF needs OCR first. Check the numbers after any conversion because tables with merged cells can shift.
Get Data from PDF found the tables right away. Saved me an hour every month. Thanks.