FormatDrop doesn't convert PDF to XLSX yet. The methods below use free tools that do. FormatDrop's own converters cover common image, audio, video and PDF formats, all in your browser.
Ways to convert PDF to Excel
- 1
Excel (Microsoft 365 for Windows)
Data → Get Data → From File → From PDF, pick the PDF, then choose the table or page in the Navigator and click Load. Each table can go to its own sheet.
- 2
Tabula (free, Windows, Mac, Linux)
Import the PDF, draw a box around the table, preview the result and export it as CSV. Open the CSV in Excel and save it as .xlsx. Tabula works on PDFs with a text layer, not scans.
- 3
Python (camelot or pdfplumber)
For many files: import camelot; camelot.read_pdf('input.pdf', pages='all').export('tables.xlsx', f='excel'). pdfplumber's page.extract_tables() gives lists of rows you can write with pandas.
Why convert PDF to XLSX?
PDFs lock data inside layouts; Excel unlocks it for analysis. Converting PDF to Excel is the bridge between presentation-ready reports and analysis-ready data.
Frequently asked questions
Will scanned PDFs convert correctly to Excel?
Only with OCR. The conversion tool must run optical character recognition first to extract text from the image. Even with high-quality OCR, scanned table extraction is error-prone — manual cleanup is usually required.
What's the best free tool for PDF to Excel?
Tabula (tabula.technology) is built for pulling tables out of PDFs; it exports CSV, which Excel opens. Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows can import PDF tables itself (Data → Get Data → From PDF). Adobe Acrobat Pro is the main paid option.
Can I extract a single table from a multi-table PDF?
Yes — tools like Tabula let you draw a rectangle around the specific table you want to extract. Online converters typically extract everything, requiring you to delete unwanted content in Excel afterward.
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