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How to Convert a PDF Bank Statement to Excel (Without Retyping)

By Sunil Kharol. Updated .

Three ways to get transactions out of a PDF bank statement and into Excel, with tips for checking totals and fixing common problems.

Banks love PDFs. Lenders, accountants and auditors often send them, and older statements are frequently only available as PDF. But you can't sort, total or import a PDF. Here are three ways to get the transactions into Excel, from fastest to most manual, and how to make sure nothing was missed.

First, check what kind of PDF you have

Open the PDF and try to select a word with your mouse.

Table comparing a PDF downloaded from online banking, where text can be selected and transactions can be extracted, with a scanned PDF, where text cannot be selected and OCR is needed first.
Try selecting a line of text in the PDF: if you can, it can be converted directly.
  • You can select text: it's a digital PDF, created by the bank's system. These convert accurately.
  • You can't select anything: it's a scan or photo. Converting it needs OCR (optical character recognition), and the results need careful checking. If possible, download the statement again from online banking instead.

Method 1: Use a statement converter (fastest)

A bank statement converter finds the transaction table, works out which numbers are money in, money out and balance, and gives you a clean spreadsheet. Our PDF bank statement to Excel converter runs in your browser, so the statement isn't uploaded anywhere:

  1. Drop the PDF on the converter. Enter the password if the PDF has one.
  2. Review the table. Rows where the tool had to guess money in or out are shaded; edit anything that looks wrong.
  3. Compare the totals with the statement.
  4. Download as Excel, or straight to QuickBooks or Xero format.

Method 2: Excel's "Get Data from PDF" (Windows, Microsoft 365)

Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows can import tables from PDFs through Power Query:

  1. Go to Data → Get Data → From File → From PDF and pick the statement.
  2. The Navigator lists the tables and pages it found. Select the transaction tables (often one per page) and choose Transform Data.
  3. In Power Query, append the page tables into one, remove header and total rows, and set the data types for the date and amount columns.
  4. Choose Close & Load.

This works well for clean layouts, but descriptions that wrap onto two lines and amounts in separate money-in and money-out columns often need extra clean-up steps. The PDF connector isn't available in every edition of Excel.

Method 3: Copy and paste (small statements)

For a statement with a dozen transactions, copying can be quickest:

  1. Select the transaction table in your PDF reader and copy it.
  2. In Excel, right-click a cell and choose Paste Special → Text.
  3. If everything lands in one column, use Data → Text to Columns with Delimited → Space, then fix descriptions that were split into several cells.

Beyond a page or two, the clean-up takes longer than the other methods, and it's easy to drop a row.

Check the result against the statement

Whichever method you use, verify before you rely on the spreadsheet:

Equation: opening balance plus money in minus money out equals closing balance.
If this equation holds, no transaction was missed or duplicated during conversion.
  • Count: the number of rows should match the number of transactions on the statement.
  • Totals: =SUMIF(C:C,"<0") and =SUMIF(C:C,">0") on a signed amount column should match the statement's total money out and money in.
  • Balance: opening balance plus the sum of all amounts should equal the closing balance.
  • Page breaks: the first and last transactions on each page are where rows usually go missing.

Keep your statement private

A bank statement shows your income, who you pay and your account details. Before using any online converter, check whether it uploads files to a server, how long it keeps them, and who can access them. Tools that work entirely in the browser avoid the question altogether.