Which photo formats work, and when the format matters
JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, TIFF, BMP and GIF all work. iPhone photos in HEIC need no conversion first, and very large photos are scaled down before reading, because resolution beyond about 2000 pixels on the long edge adds upload time and no accuracy.
The format matters less than where the photo has been. A JPG straight off the camera is ideal. One that has been forwarded through a messaging app has usually been compressed, which smears fine digits and thin grid lines. If you have the original, use it. If the table came to you through chat, ask the sender for the file itself.
A PNG is normally a screenshot, and screenshots read almost perfectly. A photo of a printed table reads well when taken square-on in even light. A photo of a screen is the worst of both, with moiré, glare and a slight angle, so take a screenshot on the device instead whenever you can.
Several photos of one long table can go up together, up to ten per job. Each becomes its own sheet in the Excel file, in the order you chose them. Paste them under one another and you have the whole table.
What this tool does
Upload a picture of a table and it comes back as a grid of rows and columns on this page. Check it against the original, then download it as an Excel file or a CSV, or copy it straight into a sheet you already have open.
That covers a price list someone sent as a photo, a screenshot of a dashboard that will not export, a scanned invoice, a timetable pinned to a wall, a stock sheet filled in by hand, and a table inside a PDF that refuses to copy cleanly.
Every grid found becomes its own table, and each keeps the page it came from, so ten photos of a ledger give you ten labelled tables rather than one tangled one. Nothing you upload becomes a public page: the file is deleted when the job finishes.
What arrives in the spreadsheet
Cell values, row order, column order, the header row and empty cells all survive. The first row of each table is treated as its header.
Numbers are written as numbers, which is the whole point of a spreadsheet. "1,234.50" becomes 1234.5, "$12" becomes 12, and an accounting negative like "(45.00)" becomes −45, so a column adds up the moment it opens. Values that only look like numbers stay as text: a part code like 00123 keeps its leading zeros, and a phone number is not turned into arithmetic.
Formatting does not come across, by design. There are no colours, borders, column widths or merged cells. A merged heading arrives as its value in the first cell with empty cells beside it, which is the flat shape that sorting, filters and pivot tables need anyway.
Two ambiguous cases are left alone rather than guessed: European decimals like "1.234,56" and percentages. Both arrive as text, and Excel's Text to Columns or a find-and-replace converts a whole column in one step.
Getting a clean table from a photo
The biggest factor is how the picture was taken, not which software reads it.
- Shoot square-on. Perspective squeezes the far side of the page, and the right-hand columns are the first thing to fail.
- Fill the frame with the table, not the desk it sits on. Small text is where digits get confused.
- Keep the rows level. A photo rotated a few degrees can split one row into two.
- Use even light and no flash. A shadow across a column costs you that column.
A screenshot beats a photo every time, because the text was drawn rather than photographed. If the table is on a screen, take a screenshot rather than photographing the monitor.
Tables with ruled lines read best. Tables held together only by spacing usually work, but occasionally two columns merge into one. When that happens, crop to the table and run it again, or split the column afterwards in Excel.
How the free tier works
Three pages a day, across up to three uploads, cost nothing and need no account. You see every table on the page and can copy any of them. The copy button puts a table on the clipboard as tab-separated rows, so it pastes into Excel or Google Sheets cell by cell.
The downloads are what cost credits: 3 for XLSX and 2 for CSV, once per job. Downloading the same file again later is free. Pages beyond your free three are 1 credit each, so a ten-page scanned statement is 7 credits plus 3 for the spreadsheet — about 43 cents from the middle pack.
Upload more pages than you have room for and the ones inside your allowance are read in full, while the rest are listed as unread. Nothing is charged for pages that were never read.
Unlike Image to Text, a PDF that already contains text is still read page by page here. Rebuilding a grid needs the layout, not just the words, so every page costs the same.
Check the numbers before you use them
A misread letter is obvious. A misread digit in a price column is not, and those are exactly the values people use without looking.
The fastest check is a total. If the original has one, sum the column in Excel and compare. A match means every figure in that column is almost certainly right, and a mismatch tells you which column to look at.
Cells that could not be read come back as [illegible] rather than a guess. Search for the word after you open the file, fix those cells from the original, and you are done. That is a couple of minutes per page, against the half hour it takes to retype one.
Example result
Five phone photos of a handwritten stock sheet, 3 columns, 118 rows in total
5 tables, one per photo, 118 rows plus headers. Quantities and prices typed as numbers; 2 cells marked [illegible]. Download: one XLSX with 5 sheets, checked against the sheet's own total.
Cost: 3 free pages, then 2 credits for the rest, plus 3 for the spreadsheet — 5 credits, about 21 cents.
How this compares
Where another tool is the better choice, it says so.
Excel's Data from Picture
BETTER THEREBuilt into Microsoft 365 and the Excel phone app. It lets you review each cell against the photo before inserting, and drops the result straight into the sheet you are working in.
BETTER HEREIt needs Excel, takes one picture at a time and does not read PDFs. Here you can upload ten photos or a 40-page scan in one go, handwriting is supported, and there is nothing to install.
ChatGPT and other chat assistants
BETTER THEREThey can do more than transcribe. Ask one to split a column, fix a date format or total the rows, all in the same conversation.
BETTER HEREA chat model will tidy or fill in values unless it is carefully told not to, and long tables can come back shortened. This is instructed to copy only, marks unreadable cells, and hands you a real spreadsheet with numbers typed as numbers.
Free PDF-to-Excel converters
BETTER THEREFor a PDF exported from accounting software, a classical converter reads the embedded text exactly, is free at high volume, and keeps column widths.
BETTER HEREThey read text that is already in the file, so photos, screenshots, scans and handwriting fail or come out as one column. This reads the page the way a person would, from pixels.
Your questions, answered.
- Do I need to convert HEIC photos from my iPhone first?
- No. HEIC uploads as it is. If your iPhone is set to Most Compatible, photos are already JPG and also work directly.
- Can I combine several photos into one sheet?
- Each photo becomes its own sheet so you can check them against the originals one by one. Paste them under one another in Excel to combine them, or use the CSV, which puts every table in one file.
- Is it free?
- Reading three pages a day is free, with no account, and you can copy every table you see. The Excel and CSV downloads cost 3 and 2 credits once per job, and pages beyond the free three are 1 credit each.
- Will the numbers add up in Excel?
- Yes. Plain numbers, comma-grouped thousands, currency amounts and bracketed negatives are written as real numbers. IDs with leading zeros, phone numbers, European decimals and percentages stay as text, so nothing is silently changed into the wrong value.
- What if there are several tables on one page?
- Each becomes its own table here, and its own sheet in the Excel file, named after its page. In the CSV they follow each other with a blank line between them.
- Can it read a table filled in by hand?
- Yes. Switch on Handwritten. Neat entries come out close to perfect. Anything genuinely unreadable comes back as [illegible] instead of a guessed number.
- Does it keep colours, borders and merged cells?
- No. You get the values in the right cells, not the design. A merged cell's value lands in its first cell, which is the shape sorting and pivot tables need anyway.
- Can I convert a PDF to Excel?
- Yes, up to 40 pages in a job. Every page is read for its grid, including PDFs that already contain text, so each page costs the same 1 credit past your free three.
- What happens if there is no table in my file?
- The job stops, says so, and charges nothing. For pages that are mostly prose, Image to Text is the right tool.
- Do you keep my files?
- The upload is deleted as soon as the job finishes. The extracted tables stay attached to your job so you can download them later. They are never put on a public page or used for training.