In this tutorial learn how to,
- Extract tabular data from one PDF to Excel
- Combine and extract tables from multiple PDFS to Excel
How to extract PDF table to Excel
Optional: If you need a sample PDF to practice these concepts, use the randomly made credit card statements I created. Download them from here.
Step 1: Go to Data ribbon & click on Get Data > File > PDF
From data ribbon, use the PDF option and point to the location on your computer (or web address).
Step 2: Select the table(s) you want in the navigator screen
Power Query will open up a navaigator screen. Just specify the table(s) you want. Refer to below illustration to know more about the navigator screen.
💡 Bonus tip: Use the composite table if you want to get a data table in your PDF that spans multiple pages. This is excellent for bank or credit card statements.
Step 3: Load or Transform data
If the preview in navigator looks satisfactory, just load it. Otherwise, click on “Transform data” to open query editor to make any final adjustments.
Combine & Extract data from multiple PDFs
Step 0: Place all your PDFs in a folder
Step 1: Folder connection
Instead of PDF option, use the Folder option in the Get Data.
Step 2: Choose “Combine” in file listing screen
Power Query will show you a screen with a list of all files it found in the folder. Choose any of the combine options here to combine the data from all files to one table.
Step 3: Select the table you want from Transfer Sample Screen
Now, you will see another navigator like screen. Just select the table you want in here. Power Query will go to each file in the folder, get the same table and combine them.
Step 4: Load or Edit the query
And enjoy.
Practice PDF Credit Card Statements
If you need a sample PDF to practice these concepts, use the randomly made credit card statements I created. Download them from here.
Video - Convert PDF to Excel
Still not sure how to extract data tables from PDF to Excel? Watch this short video and get it. See it below or on my YouTube channel.
PDF to Excel - FAQs
I don’t have PDF option in my Excel. What do I do?
You can use free Power BI Desktop to do the same. (Download Power BI for free here)
Once you have Power BI, open it, go to Get Data > PDF and follow the same steps as above tutorial.
Instead of loading the data, copy the entire table from Query Editor and paste it to Excel. See below illustration.
I have new files, how do I refresh?
Just place the files in the same folder.
Go to Excel and right click on the extracted table and select “Refresh”. Excel will update the details.
I want to exclude certain files in the folder when combining…
Open the query editor and go to the query that is responsible for your combining PDF process. Go to source step. This will show all the files in the folder.
Include a filter condition here. Power Query will warn about inserting a step. Proceed and you will be able to exclude files based on conditions.
Examples:
- Process files that have file name starting with certain letters
- Files created after certain date
- Having specific extension.
Remember: Power Query is case sensitive.
I want to pre-process or clean-up data before loading it into Excel
Open the query editor and add any necessary data transformation steps at the end.
Examples:
- Removing all foreign currency transactions from credit card statements
- Cleaning up account codes
- Rearranging columns in the PDF data table
For more on what you can do with Power Query, check out this tutorial.
Other questions…
Post a comment and I will try to help you.
8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...