Extracting data from PDF files

Some users purchase third-party software to extract data from PDF files due to a lack of better alternatives. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, a product of Adobe Corporation. PDF files are cross-platform compatible, and can be opened on any device. Extracting data from PDF files with Power Query requires Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365. The steps in this section cannot be carried out in Excel 2019 or earlier. At the time of writing, Excel for macOS does not support extracting data from PDF files.

Tip

Word 2013 and later allows you to open and edit most PDF files if your version of Excel doesn’t allow extracting data with Power Query. Open a PDF file in Word the same way you would open a Word document, and then copy and paste the results over to Excel. Some PDF documents will transfer cleanly, while others will be a jumbled mess.

Any software that extracts data from PDF files uses optical character recognition, so somtimes your data...