intermediate6 min readUpdated August 31, 2026
By PDFilio Editorial Team
How to Extract Tables from a PDF
Prepare tables in a PDF for reuse in spreadsheets and understand why complex layouts may need manual cleanup.
# How to Extract Tables from a PDF
Tables can be difficult to extract because PDFs describe positioned page content rather than spreadsheet cells.
## Workflow
1. Identify whether the table contains selectable text or is an image.
2. Open a PDF-to-Excel or table-extraction workflow that supports your document.
3. Upload the source PDF.
4. Process the table and download the spreadsheet output when available.
5. Check column alignment, merged cells, numbers, dates, and totals against the source.
## Scanned tables
If the table is an image, OCR may be required before structured extraction. Complex multi-line cells and merged columns can still need manual correction.