PDF to CSV
Export PDF tables as plain CSV for import anywhere.
About PDF to CSV
Extract the tabular content of a PDF as CSV — the format every database, spreadsheet and script will accept. Choose the delimiter, take one page or all of them, and get a file you can pipe straight into whatever needs it.
CSV is the format that survives everything. No application owns it, no version of it went obsolete, and every database, statistics package and scripting language on earth will read it without being asked twice.
This is the same table recovery as the Excel export, ending in a plain text file instead of a workbook — which is what you want when the destination is a program rather than a person.
- Processed on your deviceEverything you open or type here is handled by this page and never uploaded anywhere.
- No queue, no limitsNothing waits on a server, so the only limit is your own hardware.
- No account neededNo sign-up and no email address required.
How PDF to CSV works in your browser
The text positions on each page are measured and clustered into a grid, then written out with the separator you pick. Papa Parse handles the quoting, so a cell containing a comma, a quotation mark or a line break is escaped correctly instead of silently breaking the row count.
The delimiter choice is not cosmetic. In locales where the comma is the decimal separator, Excel expects semicolons and will pile a comma-separated file into a single column. Tab-separated output is the safest thing to paste directly into a spreadsheet.
Pages can be written as one file or as one file each. A table that ran across three pages is one table and belongs in one file; three unrelated tables do not, and stacking them would produce a CSV whose column count changes partway down — valid to a parser, meaningless to a reader.
When to use it
Feeding figures from a PDF report into a database import or a data-loading script. Getting numbers into R, pandas or a statistics package that reads CSV and nothing else. Producing a diff-able text version of a table so two revisions of a document can be compared. Moving a table into a system whose import step accepts CSV only.
Frequently asked questions
Why choose CSV over Excel?
Because almost everything reads it. If the data is going into a database import, a script or another application rather than to a person, CSV skips a layer of format and cannot carry anything you did not intend.
Can I change the delimiter?
Yes — comma, semicolon, tab or pipe. Semicolon matters if the file is going into Excel on a machine with a European locale, where comma is the decimal separator.
Does it produce one file per page?
Your choice. Pages can be concatenated into a single CSV, which suits a table that ran over several pages, or downloaded separately when the pages hold unrelated data.