Extracting Data from Scanned PDFs to Excel: A Comprehensive Guide

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Extracting Data from Scanned PDFs to Excel: A Comprehensive Guide

24 April 2025 Ashley S. Miller Specialist of Customer Service Dept.

Summary
This article underscores the value of converting scanned PDFs to Excel for streamlined data management. It distinguishes scanned PDFs from digital ones, highlights the pivotal role of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in extracting text, and offers practical tips for identifying scanned PDFs. Additionally, it recommends reliable tools for achieving precise and efficient conversions.

Table of contents

Identifying a Scanned PDF Table

Leveraging OCR Technology

Renee PDF Aide: Get Data From scanned PDF to Excel

When you receive a scanned PDF—such as a bank statement or a historical document. You may need to transform it into a format like Excel for further analysis or record-keeping. Scanned PDFs differ from standard digital PDFs as they consist of a series of images rather than selectable, searchable text. This article explains how to identify a scanned PDF, why OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is essential to extract its data, and which tools are best suited for converting these documents into Excel.

Identifying a Scanned PDF Table

Before you can convert a PDF, it’s vital to determine whether it is a scanned image. Here are some indicators:

- No Selectable Text: Open your PDF in a viewer and try highlighting the text. If you can’t select or copy text because it behaves like an image, you’re likely dealing with a scanned document.

- Visual Clues: Scanned PDFs often show slight blurriness or visual inconsistencies that are absent in digitally generated PDFs.

Leveraging OCR Technology

OCR technology is the solution to this challenge. OCR software “reads” images of text and converts them into machine-encoded text, enabling data extraction and manipulation. Here are key aspects of OCR:

- Text Extraction: OCR scans the visual components of a document to recognize letters, numbers, and symbols, converting them into editable text.

- Layout Preservation: Advanced OCR tools not only extract text but also strive to maintain the layout, ensuring that tabular data appears correctly formatted in Excel.

- Language Support: Modern OCR solutions support multiple languages and can often deal with various font styles and sizes.

Renee PDF Aide: Get Data From scanned PDF to Excel

Renee PDF Aide, easy to operate, converts up to 80 pages/min. It supports conversion from PDF to Excel, Word, PowerPoint, ePub, Text, HTML, JPG, TIFF, and more. In addition, this software integrates various functions including optimizing, repairing, and encrypting PDF files. Despite its diverse features, the interface is user-friendly and simple.

Renee PDF Aide uses advanced OCR technology to convert scanned PDFs and Images into editable formats and supports one-click batch conversion for efficiency, safety, and a free conversion experience.

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Here’s a quick guide on using it:

1. After installing Renee PDF Aide, open it. Select “Convert PDF”.

select to convert pdf with renee pdf converter

2. Add the PDF files to be converted by clicking the “Add Files” button. The software supports batch conversion, allowing you to import multiple files simultaneously. Once added, the file information will appear in the conversion list. Click the “Selected Pages” list to set the pages for conversion.

Note: Click Options to set more requirements about the output files.

3. If your PDF file is a scanned copy, please select “Enable OCR” in location 3. If not, skip this step.

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The software offers three OCR text recognition modes:

A: Recognize text in pictures or PDF scans: This mode assumes the text on the PDF page is in a picture/scanned image and uses OCR (selecting the corresponding language improves results) to recognize and output the text.

B: Identify built-in fonts (to avoid garbled characters): This mode assumes the text on the PDF page uses embedded fonts. The program converts these fonts into images, then uses OCR (selecting the corresponding language improves results) to recognize and output the text.

A+B (slower): The program automatically determines whether the font in the file is a picture or an embedded PDF font, then converts and outputs it. This mode is time-consuming, resulting in longer conversion times.

Renee PDF Aide supports 125+ OCR languages.

4. Click “Convert” button. After conversion, a prompt will display the total number of files converted, as well as the successful ones. The PDF is now converted into an Excel file. To access the result files, click the links in the “Status” column.