OCR table

/ocr converts the tables of a PDF into Excel cells. It works on a native PDF and on a scan.

What Moby does	Finds every table in the PDF and writes it in the sheet, cell by cell
Use it when	You need a whole table: the lines of a bank statement, an aged balance, a fixed-asset register. For a few precise values per document, use Extract targeted data
You need	One or more PDFs, and a cell where the tables will be written
Limits	200 PDFs per run. The first 200 pages of each

Run it

1. In the Workflows tab, click OCR table, or type /ocr in the chat.
2. Step 1/2. Choose the PDFs, then Next. Files that are not PDFs are left out.
3. Step 2/2. Click the cell where the tables should start. The card shows its address.
4. Click the Scan button, which shows the number of documents.
5. When the card says Table OCR complete, click the range it shows to go to the result.

What Moby writes

Where	From the cell you chose, to the right and downwards, on the sheet that was open at launch
Several tables	One under the other, in the order of the document, with no blank row and no title between them
Several documents	One after the other, in the order of your selection
Numbers	Real numbers, so that Excel can sum them. A sign printed after the figure, parentheses and thousands separated by spaces are understood
Dates	Real dates, shown as day/month/year
Anything unclear	Kept as text, exactly as printed: a date without a year, an amount with its unit

Watch out

• Choose an empty area, ideally a new sheet. If the area already holds values, Moby inserts whole columns at the cell you chose, as many as the widest table. Everything from that column on moves to the right, on every row of the sheet.
• A table that runs over several pages may come back in several pieces, one under the other, with its header repeated. Delete the repeated header rows.
• These cells are not linked to their source page. To get a table with a link on every cell, draw it yourself in the Preview with Extract a table: see Review and correct.
• Check the totals. A good habit is to sum each column in Excel and compare with the total printed on the document.

Learn more

• Organize PDFs extracts just the pages that hold the table: the run is shorter and the result easier to read.
• Supported formats.