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PDF to Excel
Tables into .xlsx spreadsheets. Free, no sign-up.
or drop it here
PDF to Excel runs inside your browser — your file never reaches our servers.
How to convert PDF to Excel
Tables are detected on each page and rebuilt as proper spreadsheet rows and columns — one worksheet per page.
- Select your PDF. Works best on documents with visible table structure.
- Convert. Tables are detected and their cells typed as numbers, dates or text.
- Download the .xlsx. One worksheet per page, ready for Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
What the detector counts as a table
A PDF has no idea what a table is — cells arrive as ordinary text runs that happen to line up, so the detector works from geometry. Runs are bucketed into rows by their baselines, and a row counts as tabular only when two of its runs are separated by a gap wider than word spacing — about 0.8 times the font size, with an 8-point floor. Column edges are then clustered across the candidate rows, and a band is accepted only when two consecutive tabular rows fit at least two columns. Any row that is not tabular — a line of prose running the full width — closes the band, so a paragraph between two tables cannot merge them.
Each page becomes one worksheet, named for that page. Where a page holds more than one table they are stacked on that sheet in reading order with a blank row between them, so you can still see which page a figure came from. A page with text but no qualifying band still gets a sheet, built from a looser whole-page grid, so nothing is silently dropped. Images and charts are not carried over — this produces data, not a picture of the page.
How cells are typed
Every cell is classified before it is written. 12.5% is stored as 0.125 with a percent format, so averages behave; $1,200.00 keeps its symbol in the number format rather than in the text; an accounting negative like (1,234) becomes -1234 that still displays in brackets. Two things stay text on purpose — identifiers with a leading zero, so 007 survives as 007, and runs of more than 15 digits, which a spreadsheet would quietly round.
The first row becomes a header when it is bold, or when it is all text with typed values below it: bold type, a grey fill and a rule under it — and a header like 2024 stays a label rather than the number 2024. Numeric cells are right-aligned, and columns are sized to their widest cell, between 8 and 60 characters. If your document is prose with a table in it, PDF to Word rebuilds the prose as editable paragraphs and the table as a real Word table; for text headed somewhere else entirely, PDF to Markdown.
Questions
What if my table has no gridlines?
Detection uses column alignment as well as ruled lines, so many borderless tables still come through. Very irregular layouts may need tidying.
Are numbers real numbers?
Yes. Cells that look numeric are written as numbers, and dates as dates, so you can sum and sort immediately instead of fixing text-formatted columns.
Why did one PDF produce several worksheets?
One sheet per page, named for the page. Where a single page holds more than one table they are stacked on that page’s sheet in reading order, separated by a blank row, so a three-page document gives you three sheets rather than a scatter of unlabelled ones.
Are dates read day-first or month-first?
Month-first, unless the first number cannot be a month: 03/04/2026 is read as 4 March 2026, while 15/04/2026 is read day-first. Both are written with a mm/dd/yyyy display format, and an ISO date like 2026-04-03 keeps yyyy-mm-dd. Anything without a four-digit year — 12/15, say — is deliberately left as text, because it could just as easily be a score or a ratio.
Can it pull a table out of a scanned PDF?
Partly. Pages with no text layer are recognised automatically, but that built-in pass covers English and Korean and returns lines rather than positions, so those pages arrive as one line per row in a single column instead of a grid. Each line is still typed, so a recognised 42 is a number. For another language, run OCR PDF first with the right pack and convert the searchable copy it gives you.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Every tool on this site runs inside your browser, using the same engine as the Folia desktop app. Your file is read from your disk into your browser’s memory, processed there, and handed back as a download. It never crosses the internet, so there is nothing for us to store, leak or hand over.
Is there a file size limit?
We impose none. The only ceiling is your own device’s memory, which differs from one computer to another — so we read what your browser reports about this machine and show the resulting limit on the page. Light tools like merge and rotate handle far more than heavy ones like OCR, which must render every page. For anything larger, Folia for Desktop has no limit at all.
Is it really free? Do I need an account?
Yes, and no. Every tool is free and unlimited, with no watermark and no sign-up. Ads pay for the site, and your own computer does the work, which costs us nothing. Signing in with a paid Folia plan simply removes the ads.