From PDF
to Excel.

A bank statement PDF looks like a table, but a PDF stores words at positions on a page, not rows and columns. To get a statement into Excel, something has to rebuild the table. There are three ways to do it.

1. Copy and paste

Select the transactions in a PDF reader, copy them, and paste them into Excel. For a few lines this works. For a whole statement, each line usually lands in one cell, and you split it into columns by hand. A description that runs over two lines becomes two rows.

2. Excel's PDF import

Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows can read tables from a PDF:

1. Select Data > Get Data > From File > From PDF.
2. Choose the statement.
3. In the Navigator, choose the tables to import, then select Load.

This works when the PDF has text in it and the bank prints a clean grid. Excel finds the tables page by page, so a long statement comes in as several tables that you combine, and page headings come along with the transactions. It cannot read a scan or a photo, because there is no text in it to read.

3. A converter built for statements

BankPDFtoXLS reads the statement's own layout: its header row, its columns and its rows, across every page. The spreadsheet keeps your bank's column names and adds a Ledger column that checks every balance against the row before it. Scans and photos are read with OCR (software that reads text from an image).

1. Upload the PDF on the home page.
2. Check page one in the preview. Page one is free, with no email and no card.
3. If the columns look right, create an account to convert every page.

The download is a CSV file, which Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers open directly. The PDF is deleted when its conversion finishes, and the privacy policy says how long the spreadsheet is kept.

Check the result

Whichever way you choose, check two things:

• If your bank prints totals for money in and money out, compare them with the totals of those columns.
• Each balance must equal the one before it, plus money in, minus money out. In a BankPDFtoXLS spreadsheet, filter the Ledger column for break to find the rows that do not. Why a balance breaks explains what to look for.

Put a date on every row

Many banks print the date only on the first transaction of each day. NatWest, HSBC and Virgin Money do this, and the spreadsheet keeps each date where the statement prints it. To fill in the rest in Excel:

1. Select the Date column.
2. Select Home > Find & Select > Go To Special, choose Blanks, and select OK.
3. Type =, press the Up arrow key, and press Ctrl+Enter.

When a statement does not convert

• Bank not supported means the converter found no header row with a date and a balance.
• No balance column to reconcile means it found no balance and amount columns to check the transactions with.

If either appears for a statement you expect to work, email support.