Import PDF to Google Sheets: 4 Routes That Work

Quick Answer: Google Sheets has no PDF import, so you move the data through another step. For a short table, copy it from the PDF, paste into Sheets and use Data > Split text to columns. For a scan, open the PDF in Drive with Open with > Google Docs to get OCR text first. For long tables, convert the PDF to .xlsx and open that in Sheets.

Google Sheets cannot open or import a PDF directly: File > Import accepts spreadsheets and text files, and functions such as IMPORTDATA only read CSV or TSV. To get PDF data into Sheets, paste the text and split it into columns, use Google Drive's Google Docs conversion for scanned pages, or turn the PDF into an Excel file first and open that in Sheets.

Why can't Google Sheets import a PDF?

Sheets imports formats that already have rows and columns: .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .tsv and plain text with a separator. A PDF has none of that. It stores each word at a position on a page, and nothing in the file says "this is cell C4". Google's spreadsheet functions are built on the same assumption:

• IMPORTDATA(url) fetches a file at a URL in .csv or .tsv format. Point it at a PDF and you get binary noise or an error.
• IMPORTHTML(url, "table", 1) reads a <table> or list from a web page's HTML, per Google's IMPORTHTML help. A PDF hosted online is not HTML, so there is no table for it to find.
• IMPORTRANGE reads other Google Sheets only.

So the job is always: get the PDF's text somewhere Sheets can read it, then split it into columns. The four routes below differ in how much of that splitting you do by hand.

Route 1: copy, paste and split

Best for one table of a few dozen rows in a PDF that has selectable text.

1. Open the PDF in any viewer and select the table rows. Skip the heading line if you plan to type headings yourself.
2. Copy, then click cell A1 in a new sheet and paste with Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V on a Mac), which pastes values only without formatting.
3. Each line of the table lands in column A. Select column A.
4. Choose Data > Split text to columns. Google's split text help explains the Separator menu that appears: leave it on Detect automatically, or choose Space or a custom character.
5. Check that the description column did not break into several cells at each space.

When descriptions contain spaces, splitting on spaces scatters them. A formula gives you more control. Google's SPLIT function divides text at a delimiter: =SPLIT(A2, " ") mirrors the menu, while combining it with REGEXEXTRACT lets you pull out pieces by pattern, for example the first date with =REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"^\d{2}/\d{2}") and the last number on the line with =REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"-?[\d,]+\.\d{2}$"). Whatever is left between them is the description. Fill the formulas down, then copy the results and paste as values.

Pasting from PDFs into Excel has the same problem and the same cures; the Excel version of this fix covers wrapped rows and numbers stored as text in more depth.

Route 2: Drive's Open with Google Docs for scanned PDFs

If you cannot select text in the PDF, it is a scan, and you need OCR. Google Drive does this for free when it converts a PDF to a Google Doc. From Google's Drive help page on converting PDFs and photos to text:

1. Upload the PDF to Google Drive on a computer.
2. Right-click the file.
3. Choose Open with > Google Docs.

Drive creates a new Google Doc and leaves the original PDF in place. Google's own conditions for good results are strict: the file should be two megabytes or smaller, text should be at least 10 pixels high, the page must be right side up, and common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman read best. The same page warns that tables, columns, lists and footnotes are "not likely to be detected".

That last point shapes how you use it. Expect the Doc to contain the table as lines of text, sometimes with columns read one after another instead of row by row. Copy the relevant lines from the Doc into Sheets and finish with Route 1's split step. For a large scan, split it into smaller PDFs first so each file stays within Google's size guidance.

This is also what people mean by "convert PDF to Excel in Google Docs" or "in Google Drive": there is no direct PDF-to-spreadsheet button in either, only this PDF-to-Doc conversion followed by a paste.

Route 3: convert to Excel first, then open in Sheets

For multi-page tables, a proper converter does the column detection and Sheets simply opens the result.

1. Convert the PDF to .xlsx. On Windows with Microsoft 365, Excel's Data > Get Data > From PDF does it (see how to import a PDF into Excel); Adobe Acrobat's export and other converters also produce .xlsx.
2. Upload the .xlsx to Google Drive.
3. Double-click it in Drive and choose Open with Google Sheets, or in a sheet use File > Import > Upload to bring it into an existing spreadsheet, choosing whether to create a new sheet or replace the current one.
4. Review the columns. Sheets keeps the values and most basic formatting, but check dates, since a converter set to one locale and a spreadsheet set to another can swap day and month.

This route handles repeated page headers and wrapped rows better than pasting, because the converter sees the whole page layout rather than a stream of copied text.

How do you get the Sheet back out as Excel?

Many searches for "Google Sheets PDF to Excel" end here: you want an .xlsx file at the end. Once the data is in Sheets and cleaned, choose File > Download > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). Formulas such as SPLIT and REGEXEXTRACT come across as Excel formulas where Excel has an equivalent; paste values first if you want a file with no formula dependencies. Comma-separated values (.csv) is in the same menu if the next system wants plain text.

Which route should you pick?

Getting a bank statement into Sheets

Statements are the most common PDF people try to pull into Sheets, usually for a budget. They are also the worst fit for the generic routes: dozens of pages, debit and credit columns, wrapped merchant names and summary boxes that look like data.

QuickBankConvert takes the statement PDF on upload, parses it on our servers and returns one row per transaction with date, description, category, a signed amount and the running balance where printed. Download the Excel or CSV file and open it in Sheets as in Route 3. The PDF to Google Sheets page shows the columns, and the statement-specific Google Sheets format guide covers locale and date settings. If the destination is a budget, the Google Sheets budgeting guide picks up from there.

Related guides

• How to turn a PDF into an Excel spreadsheet
• Convert a PDF table to Excel with table-aware tools
• Convert a statement now