PDF tables shift when pasted into Excel
You select a table in a PDF, copy it, paste it into Excel — and everything piles into a single column, rows drift out of line, and merged headers scatter. The more numeric columns the table has, the longer it takes to put back by hand.
The cause is that a PDF has no notion of a table. Its contents are just instructions: "draw this character at these coordinates", "draw a line here". To the eye the rules and the numbers form a table; inside the file they have no relationship to each other. Copying simply picks up characters in drawing order, and that is where the row-and-column correspondence is lost.
So the structure has to be reconstructed from the coordinates. PDFIntact analyses the layout to work out which cell belongs to which row and column, and where cells are merged, then writes them out as real merged cells in Excel.
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Example
取り出せるもの
- 罫線 — 引いて書き出します。罫線が無いと結合セルの範囲が読めず、元のPDFと照合できません
- 結合セル — 階層のある見出し行（横方向・縦方向）を再現します
- 列見出し・行見出しの区別 — 列見出しは薄い網掛けと太字。行見出しは太字だけにします（都道府県名などの行見出しまで塗ると、シート全体がまだらになって構造が読めなくなるため）
- 確度 — 各表の先頭に、読み取り値か推定値かの帯を置きます
本文も必要な場合は、同じ変換結果から Word・Markdown でも書き出せます。形式ごとに何が入るかもご確認ください。
Frequently asked questions
- Why do PDF tables lose their alignment in Excel?
- Because a PDF does not store tables as tables. It stores instructions to draw characters at coordinates and lines at coordinates, with no link between them. Copying reads characters in drawing order, so rows and columns fall apart.
- Are merged cells preserved?
- Yes. Multi-level header rows — merged horizontally and vertically — are reproduced as merged cells in Excel, and rules are drawn so you can see the extent of each merge and check it against the original PDF.
- What about documents with a lot of tables?
- Each table becomes its own sheet, named with its page number. Above 40 tables and charts the output switches to three sheets — contents, tables and charts — with internal links from the contents sheet, because dozens of tabs stop being usable.
- Can I tell whether the numbers were read correctly?
- Each table carries a confidence band showing whether values were read from the document, estimated, or could not be read. Unreadable cells are marked rather than silently left blank, so you know where to check.
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