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PDF to Excel (best effort)

Turns a PDF into a spreadsheet you can open in Excel or LibreOffice. Tables become real cells — with their fonts, colours, borders and merged headings — and numbers stay numbers you can add up. The page states plainly: "Best effort — layout may differ."

To convert a PDF to Excel:

  1. Drop your PDF, or use Choose file or From library.
  2. Make your three choices (you can change them at any time; the preview updates):
    • Sheets — One sheet per page (each page on its own sheet, named Page 1, Page 2, …) or Everything in one sheet (all pages on one sheet, each new page starting under a grey "Page 2", "Page 3" … row).
    • Layout — Keep the data tidy ("Tables stay tables you can sort and add up.") or Match the page layout ("Everything sits where it did on the page; cells may be narrow or merged.").
    • File type — Excel (.xlsx) for any recent Excel, Older Excel (.xls) for Excel 97–2003, or LibreOffice (.ods) for LibreOffice Calc.
  3. Files up to 25 MB convert and preview automatically, and again every time you change a choice — the old preview stays on screen with "Updating preview…" until the new one is ready. Over 25 MB, the file's info card lists your choices in words ("Your choices: One sheet per page · Keep the data tidy · Excel (.xlsx)"); select Convert to Excel to run it.

Your choices are remembered until you close the browser tab.

What you'll see: a preview of the result rendered as a PDF, and a Download <file>.xlsx button (.xls or .ods if you chose that file type) that's ready as soon as the workbook itself is done (the preview can take a moment longer). If the preview can't be built, you'll see "Preview isn't available for this file — the download still works." Pick a scanned PDF (no text layer) and you'll see "This looks scanned — run OCR first for editable text" the instant you pick it, in the preview area — over 25 MB the same warning appears in the file's info card instead, which also always notes "Layout may shift slightly in conversion." Either way, run OCR (make searchable) first; converting a scan anyway ends with the engine's own "This PDF has no text to convert. Run OCR (make text searchable) first." A Save to library checkbox (off by default) keeps the converted workbook in your File Library too, alongside the download.

If something goes wrong

The reason appears under the button. A very long document can be too big for the older format: you'll see "This document is too large for the older Excel format. Choose Excel (.xlsx) instead." If the workbook can't be saved as .xls or .ods, you'll see "Conversion failed. The workbook could not be saved in that file type. Choose Excel (.xlsx) instead." — choose Excel (.xlsx) and convert again. If ticking Save to library fails, you'll see "Couldn't save to the library — the download still worked." — the download itself already succeeded.