How to Import PDF into Excel with Get Data From PDF

Quick Answer: In Excel for Windows, go to Data > Get Data > From File > From PDF, pick the file, then choose a table in the Navigator and click Load (or Transform Data to clean it first). The feature is Power Query's PDF connector, it is free with your Excel licence, and it only reads PDFs that contain real text. File > Open will not turn a PDF into a worksheet.

Excel can import a PDF directly, but not through File > Open. The import lives under Data > Get Data > From File > From PDF, which hands the file to Power Query. Power Query finds the tables on each page, shows them in a Navigator window, and loads the one you choose into a sheet. It costs nothing extra and works best on PDFs generated by software rather than scanned.

Which versions of Excel can import a PDF?

Microsoft's own help page for importing data with Power Query lists the PDF steps under Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2024, Excel 2021, Excel 2019 and Excel 2016. In practice this is a Windows feature. A few details decide whether you will see the menu item at all:

Microsoft also notes that the PDF connector needs .NET Framework 4.5 or later. If Excel says extra components are required when you pick a PDF, that is the missing piece, not a problem with your file.

So "convert PDF to Excel Office 365" really means this: if you pay for Microsoft 365 and use Windows, the converter is already inside Excel. Mac users should read the method guide for turning a PDF into Excel, which covers routes that do not depend on Power Query.

How do you import a PDF into Excel step by step?

These steps follow Microsoft's support article, with notes on what each screen is doing.

1. Open a blank workbook (or the workbook you want the data in) and select the Data tab.
2. Choose Get Data > From File > From PDF.
3. Browse to the PDF and click Open. If the PDF has a password, remove the protection first in your PDF reader; the connector expects an unprotected file.
4. Wait while the Navigator dialog reads the document. On a long file this can take a minute, because Power Query examines every page.
5. In the Navigator, click each entry on the left and look at the preview on the right. The list normally mixes tables that Power Query detected with entries that represent a whole page.
6. Tick the entry you want. To bring in several, select Select multiple items first and tick each.
7. Click Load to drop the data into a new sheet as an Excel table, Load To to choose a location or load only a connection, or Transform Data to open the Power Query Editor before anything lands in the workbook.

If you load straight away and the columns look wrong, nothing is lost. Right-click the query in the Queries & Connections pane, choose Edit, and you are back in Power Query with every step recorded.

Picking the right table in the Navigator

The Navigator is where most imports succeed or fail. Detected tables are Power Query's guess at a grid: it looks for aligned columns, ruling lines and repeated spacing. Page entries are rawer: they hold every text fragment on that page arranged into rows and columns, including headers, footers and fine print.

A practical way to choose:

• Start with detected tables. If one preview shows clean column headings and the row count you expect, that is your table.
• Fall back to page entries when the table you need is not detected, or is split into two tables because a column was blank on part of the page. You will delete junk rows later, but nothing is missing.
• Check the last rows of each preview. Totals, subtotals and "continued on next page" lines often sit at the bottom and need filtering out.
• Watch for multi-line cells. A description that wraps onto a second line in the PDF can arrive as two rows, the second with only text and empty number columns.

How do you combine tables that run across several pages?

Power Query's PDF function has a setting called MultiPageTables, and Microsoft's PDF connector documentation says it is on by default: similar tables on consecutive pages are joined into one. When that works, the Navigator shows a single long table instead of one per page, and you are done.

When it does not, combine the pieces yourself in the Power Query Editor:

1. Load each page's table as its own query with Load To > Only Create Connection.
2. In the editor, choose Home > Append Queries > Append Queries as New and add every page query in order.
3. Use Home > Use First Row as Headers once, then filter out the repeated header rows that came from the other pages (filter the Date column to remove the literal word "Date", for example).
4. Close & Load the appended query.

The same documentation gives two tips for big files. You can edit the Pdf.Tables step in the formula bar to set StartPage and EndPage and read the document a range at a time, and if the PDF is one enormous table, turning MultiPageTables off can avoid timeouts. For many separate PDFs rather than one long one, the Folder connector imports a whole directory; the guide to extracting data from multiple PDF files into Excel walks through that.

Cleaning the import in Power Query

Every cleanup step you do in the editor is saved and replayed if you refresh, which matters when you import a fresh PDF of the same layout next month. The ones worth knowing:

• Remove Top Rows / Remove Bottom Rows to drop titles and footers.
• Change Type on each column. Set dates to Date (use Using Locale if the PDF prints day before month) and amounts to Decimal Number. Values that fail show as Error, which tells you exactly which rows need attention.
• Replace Values to strip currency symbols or trailing "CR"/"DR" markers before changing the type.
• Fill Down for wrapped rows: Microsoft suggests Table.FillDown or Table.Group for multi-line rows that were not identified correctly.
• Merge Columns when a description was split over two columns.

Because the steps replay, you can swap in a new file by changing the source path under Data Source Settings and clicking Refresh, rather than repeating the whole job.

Why doesn't File > Open work on a PDF?

File > Open in Excel expects workbooks and text formats such as CSV. A PDF stores characters positioned on a page, with no concept of cells, so Excel's open dialog has nothing to map. Word's File > Open can convert a PDF into an editable document, and some people paste from there, but that route loses column structure more often than Power Query does.

Scanned PDFs are a separate problem. A scan is a picture of a page, so the PDF connector finds no text and the Navigator comes back empty or with blank tables. On Windows, Excel's Data > From Picture feature can read a screenshot of a table one page at a time; for longer documents you need OCR first.

When is a statement converter the better route?

Get Data from PDF is a general table reader. It does not know that a bank statement has a running balance that should reconcile, that a debit column and a credit column should become one signed amount, or that the summary box on page one is not a transaction. For an occasional invoice or report table it is the free, sensible choice.

For statements, the cleanup above becomes a monthly chore. QuickBankConvert is built for that one document type: you upload the statement PDF, it is parsed on our servers, and you get one row per transaction with date, description, category, a signed amount and the balance where the bank prints one. It also reads the account number, statement period and opening and closing balances, so you can confirm the rows add up before you download. A free account downloads CSV and Excel files; the pricing page lists the page and statement limits. The landing page for bank statement PDF to Excel shows the output columns.

Once the transactions are in a table, the next step is usually summarising them, which the guide to bank statement pivot tables in Excel covers.

Related guides

• How to turn any PDF into Excel: every method compared
• Convert a PDF table to Excel without breaking it
• Copying a PDF table into Excel and fixing the paste
• Upload a statement and preview the rows