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How to get a table from a PDF into Excel or Numbers on a Mac

Convert a PDF table to Excel or Numbers on a Mac for free, why pasting puts each row in one cell, and the two steps that split it back into columns.

The problem

You have a bank statement or price list as a PDF and need the numbers in a spreadsheet. You copy the table, paste it into Excel or Numbers, and every row lands in a single cell.

How do I convert a PDF to Excel on a Mac for free?

Copy the table from Preview, paste it into Excel or Numbers, then split each row into columns: Data > Text to Columns in Excel, or paste into a blank Numbers table and adjust. For long or messy tables, extract the text with its layout first, below.

Why does a PDF table paste into one column?

Because a PDF has no idea it contains a table. It only knows where each word sits. We copied a four row table out of a PDF on a Mac: every row came out on its own line, but the columns were separated by plain spaces, not tabs. Spreadsheets split pasted text into columns on tabs, so with spaces each row stays in one cell.

Measured on 16 October 2026 on a MacBook Air (M1), macOS 27.0.1, with made test files. The copied text read, row by row, "Date Item Amount", "01 Oct Coffee 4.50", "02 Oct Train ticket 12.80": spaces between columns, and a space inside "Train ticket" too.

How do I split the pasted rows into columns?

  1. In Excel, select the pasted column and choose Data > Text to Columns.
  2. Choose Delimited, tick Space, and finish.
  3. Check rows where a cell had a space inside it, like a two word item, which will have split into two cells. Fix those by hand.

How do I keep the columns lined up?

Extract the text with its layout. The free pdftotext tool keeps each column in place with spaces, so a fixed width import can split it cleanly. With Homebrew:

brew install poppler
pdftotext -layout -f 3 -l 3 statement.pdf page3.txt

The -f and -l options pick the pages. Open the text file in Excel and choose Fixed width in the import, which splits at the column gaps rather than at every space.

What about scanned tables?

A scan has no text to copy until text recognition reads it. Live Text can copy a scanned table: copy text from a scanned PDF. Check every number afterwards; recognition confuses 0 and O, and 1 and l.

Our take

For a table of a few rows, retyping is quicker than fixing a bad import, and for a long one the layout method beats any converter that guesses. The online converters at the top of search results upload your statement to do the same thing.

With Simply PDF

Simply PDF's PDF to text and PDF to Word give you the words to work with, and Make Searchable adds text to scans so they can be copied. Those tools need a key; opening and reading are free.

Questions

Why does my PDF table paste into one column?

Copied PDF text separates columns with spaces, not tabs, so a spreadsheet keeps each row in one cell. Use Text to Columns with Space as the delimiter.

Can I convert a PDF table to Excel for free on a Mac?

Yes. Copy it from Preview and split it with Text to Columns, or extract it with pdftotext -layout and import it as fixed width.

Can Numbers open a PDF?

No. The file types Numbers opens include Excel and CSV files but no PDF. Copy the table from Preview and paste it into a Numbers table instead.

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