How to Extract Tables from PDF – Top 3 Ways to Get Table Data Easily

Do you want to annotate the specific table data in a PDF document? Or do you want to retain the original hierarchical structure of the table in a PDF? If you want, the best solution is to extract tables from PDF, and then you can do anything with the table. 

However, if you’ve ever tried to extract data from a PDF document, you would know that extracting tables from PDF can be a challenging task, primarily due to the complexity of formats. Luckily, this guide covers three great ways that can help you extract table from a PDF quickly and easily. Now, let’s see how to get table from a PDF using these methods work. 

As mentioned earlier, Table extraction is not easy. It usually requires a combination of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and visual cues, which is a widely used technology for text recognition of documents. There are very few applications that adopt such a technology, but iTop PDF is one of the few that does.

iTop PDF is a simple yet powerful PDF manager for Windows. With its built-in OCR converter, you can recognize and extract text or tables from scanned PDFs without messing up the format. Beyond that, iTop PDF also allows you to edit, convert, merge&split, compress PDF, or to remove links from PDF with one click. 

What makes iTop PDF a must-have software?

• Edit PDF smoothly without hassle
• Convert PDF to any format in high quality
• Split and Merge PDF files easily and quickly
• Add e-signature effortlessly to your PDF

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Anyway, iTop PDF can be your go-to option if you want a versatile table extractor for PDF. Here are more features of iTop PDF. 

• Convert PDF to Excel to Extract Tables for Free. iTop PDF is capable of converting entire PDFs to Microsoft Excel. All tables trapped in your PDF will be extracted accurately with their original structure. 

• Convert PDF to Excel, Word, Image, etc. In addition to PDF, iTop PDF allows you to convert documents to a variety of other formats, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint while maintaining the original format. This is great for people to solve the problem of how to convert PDF to Word without losing format.

• One-Stop PDF Editing Solutions. As the best PDF editor, it offers a set of editing functions that allows you to edit your PDF documents by annotating, highlighting, adding or deleting text, and inserting images. By the way, you can use it to add watermark to PDF. 

• Powerful PDF Combiner and Compressor. With iTop PDF, it’s also possible to compress PDF without losing quality, which, to some extent, can save a lot of storage space on your device.

How to extract table from a PDF with iTop PDF:

After learning the main features of iTop PDF, it’s time to utilize it to extract tables from PDF. Now, follow the steps to see how to extract table from PDF. 

Step 1. Download and install iTop PDF on your computer.

Step 2. Launch iTop PDF. Then, select Convert from its top menu bar and import the PDF file that contains the table. Click To Excel to start converting.

Step 3. A new window will pop up to let you select where to store the converted file. Then, click Convert to Excel. Once done, you can find the converted files on your computer. 

Another simple way to extract table from PDF is directly using Excel. Excel packs with a feature that allows you to extract data, including tables, from a PDF file. Here are the steps to do it. 

Step 1. Open your Excel spreadsheet on your computer. From the top menu bar, click Data.

Step 2. Under the Get & Transform section, click Get Data. A drop-down list will show you some options. Select From File > From PDF.

Step 3. A new window will pop up to let you import the PDF file you wish to convert. Just select your PDF file and click Open to proceed.

Step 4. Next, a navigator window will open with some options in Excel. You can select the table you want to import and click Load.  

Adobe Acrobat, as its name implies, is a commercial app designed for PDF editing. With it, you can quickly extract tabular data from PDF files or convert PDF files to other file formats like Microsoft Excel. It supports a 7-day free trial and more advanced functions required to subscribe to its premium plan. Now, let’s see how to extract tables from PDF using Adobe Acrobat.

Step 1. Download and install Adobe Acrobat on your computer. 

Step 2. On its home page, select Convert from its top menu bar. 

Step 3. Scroll down to click PDF to Excel. 

Step 4. A new window will pop up to let you add a file from your device. Just upload the PDF that contains the table you wish to extract.

Step 5. Once uploaded, select Export to XLSX in the lower right corner. Then, click the download icon in the upper right corner to save your file. 

The following FAQs might be helpful if you want to learn more about how to extract table from PDF.

Q1: Can I extract a table from a PDF to Word?

A1: Of course. You can achieve this goal by converting your PDF document to a Word file with iTop PDF. Once the conversion completes, you can further edit the table in your Word. 

Q2: What is the best way to extract tables from PDF?

A2: It’s hard to say which way is best for you to extract tables from PDF because it all depends on your specific requirements. If you want a more flexible and quicker option, you can opt for iTop PDF. If you don’t want to use any software, you can directly get table from PDF using Excel. Each way has its strengths and weaknesses. Just choose the one that you prefer most. 

Q3: Does extracting tables from PDF affect the original document?

A3: No, it doesn’t affect the original document when you extract tables from PDF. Unlike the compress PDF online process that may damage your original file quality, extracting tables from PDF is a process of making a copy of your original table, processing it, and then generating a new file only with the table on it. 

That’s all about how to extract tables from PDF. From our guide, you can see that it is easy to extract table from a PDF with the right tool. Among the tools introduced above, iTop PDF is the most recommended for its easy-to-use, rich set of functions, good compatibility, and rapid conversion speed. With it installed, you can convert PDF to a wide variety of file formats like Word, Excel, Image, and more. Now, get it on your computer and let it help you do a quick conversion.