OCR to Excel Converter: 6 Best Freeware to Choose

PDF files can either be presented in native form or scanned when they contain content in image format. While the process to convert native PDF into Excel is pretty easy and straightforward, converting scanned PDF files requires some extra specialty. For you to work with scanned PDF files, you need to grab a tool that implements built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities. While the process to look for a good OCR to Excel software may have proven to be tedious and overly time-consuming, this article puts an end to that hassle and brings you 6 of the best OCR to spreadsheet software available for use.

By arming yourself with one of these OCR to Excel software, you will be able to conveniently digitize your scanned PDF files into editable content. Better yet, this also means that you can now get rid of the need to retype a whole scanned PDF which consumes quite a lot of time; each OCR software featured here will bring that time down to just a matter of moments. Having said that, let us now dive in and get acquainted with the 6 best OCR software that will open you up to that effortless OCR to spreadsheet process.

6 Great OCR to Excel Converters on Windows – Free Download

1. TalkHelper PDF Converter OCR

TalkHelper PDF Converter OCR has made quite a name for itself in the document conversion industry due to its comprehensiveness when it comes to delivering powerful and reliable features. Whether you are working on a native or scanned PDF file, this software will make sure you obtain satisfactory results at the end of the day. It boasts of a built-in OCR feature that comes in handy to convert scanned PDF files into editable Excel format in just a few clicks.

In addition to that, it happens to be well endowed with multiple languages, 46 to be specific, which means that you are able to OCR scanned PDFs with the most common languages. You are also empowered with the options to OCR specific pages or even page ranges from a PDF file in the instance it is not necessary to OCR the whole document. This means that you will be able to extract just the content you need and have it in an editable Excel format. All this is possible on a simple and instinctive user interface that this tool delivers.

2. Tesseract OCR

Amazingly, Tesseract OCR software must be the best when you consider the number of languages supported; to be specific, it supports more than 100 languages which is more than double what other programs out there are able to support. This is greatly attributed to the program featuring the ability to be trained to recognize other languages.

This free and open source tool does not come with a graphical user interface but at the same time does not in any way fall short of exemplary results besides being available across Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. In order to achieve high-quality results, it is advisable to input scanned PDF files that are of top quality so that this OCR to spreadsheet software can work its magic to retain the layout and formatting. At the end of the day, this program will go a long way to rid you of the need to look for complex software to OCR scanned PDFs into their Excel equivalent without spending a single penny.

3. SimpleOCR

Looking to avoid the need to retype scanned documents in Excel? SimpleOCR is one of the popular offline pdf to excel converter that will give you exactly that. It will not matter if you have multiple column layouts, non-standard fonts, poor color and low-quality images in your scanned PDF at the built-in OCR feature will process all that for you in a more accurate way than you expected or than other similar functioning tools.

In fact, the program boasts of up to 99% accuracy which consequently rids of the need to post OCR editing for correction purposes. Its huge dictionary ensures that there is no word that cannot be recognized and at the same time is able to OCR noisy documents. You can also rest assured that the OCR to Excel process will also leave your output in the same format as before and on top of that, you can save time and effort by implementing the batch OCR feature. Better yet, this program also lets you extract text from specific areas without the need to OCR the whole page.

4. ABBYY FineReader

With ABBYY FineReader, you can reuse any content from a scanned PDF file with the ultimate simplicity. Actually, you will be able to extract both text and tables directly, maintain their formatting and then you will be ready to apply further actions once in the Excel format. Your non-searchable scanned PDFs will now be transformed and made searchable in the Excel format equivalent.

The built-in Optical Character Recognition tool ensures all that is possible without breaking a single sweat unlike when you have to retype everything. The incorporated intelligent OCR sees to it that utmost accuracy, layout, and structure are retained as much as possible so that you can only apply necessary edits later on and not take time to correct a whole Excel file. At the end of the day, you have that ultimate flexibility and precise control when you need an OCR to convert scanned PDFs to Excel format.

5. Docsumo OCR

Docsumo OCR brings in a whole different level of converting scanned PDFs into Excel by featuring one-of-a-kind automation to the process. Actually, you need not have any special skills or coding capabilities to get started with this program hence pretty accommodating. To ensure that data is extracted with the utmost accuracy This OCR to Excel software has some nifty tools under its arms that let you deskew, denoise, correct contrast even before you can finally export the final file.

We all know that tables come in handy when working in Excel and that is why Docsumo ensures that the tables from scanned PDF files are extracted with precision in order to do away with the need to retype the whole table when you need in in Excel all thanks to the smart table extraction feature. If you want the data to be delivered in a certain format, you can make this possible using the incorporated smart filters. It is also very efficient with the OCR process taking a matter of moments and on top of you enjoying batch conversion.

6. ReadIRIS Pro

ReadIRIS Pro brings about an intuitive way to deal with scanned PDF files so that you can then edit them in Microsoft Excel hassle-free. The transforming is not just done haphazardly as this OCR software gives importance to every detail and hence makes sure everything is digitized accurately. To the greatest extent, this OCR to Excel software aims at preserving the original format of the data as much as possible and as a result, rid you of the need to apply extra editing once done.

The process is made as simple as possible too in order for first-timers to have an easy time to OCR scanned PDFs and this is reiterated by the overly simple user interface. Performance is also key and therefore, this tool has been crafted to work pretty fast and on top of that will offer you nifty document management options. Amazingly, the OCR tool supports up to 30 languages and it is unlikely you miss the one your scanned PDF file comes with. Besides that, you are opened up to batch conversion and the ability to recognize Excel tables with the ultimate ease.

The moment you arm yourself with one of the 6 freeware programs featured here, the process to extract data from scanned PDF files into Microsoft Excel format will feel just like a knife through butter. The time-consuming process of retyping a document is now a thing of the past when these awesome tools form that integral part of your PDF file conversions. The good thing is that every single one of these OCR software is free to use without any limitations whatsoever. Having come to the end of the article, which program has promised to take care of your OCR to spreadsheet needs in a satisfactory way?