How to convert a PDF to a CSV on Mac [2023]

Productivity Boost

Jackson Kustec

jackson@macro.com

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023

How do I convert PDFs to CSV on Mac?

Whether it’s to apply formulas, run calculations, or build graphs, professionals often need to export data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets.

In this article, I walk you through three ways to convert PDFs to CSV.

How to convert a PDF to Excel?

Imagine you own a small accounting firm. You receive financial statements from clients in PDF format, but you must manipulate the data for analysis and reporting.

Your usual manual data entry process is time-consuming and prone to errors.

What do you do?

Method 1. How to convert PDF to CSV by copying and pasting text

Converting PDFs to CSV via Mac’s Preview app is done through copy-and-paste.

It’s a simple yet effective way to convert PDFs to CSVs, as it lets you convert specific parts of a PDF.

👀 Note: The copy-paste process gives you the best result only when your PDF is opened in Mac’s Preview app and you paste the content to Mac’s Numbers app.

I tried to copy and paste PDF content to Numbers by opening a file in Macro, Adobe Acrobat, and PDFelement, but the table formatting was off.

So here’s what I did instead 👇

Step 1. Opening a PDF in Preview

If your Mac’s default PDF app is Preview, double-click on the PDF, and it will open.

If not:

Right-click the PDF you want to open
Go to Open With
Select Preview

Step 2. Converting PDFs to CSV with Preview

From the PDF file, copy all the content you want to convert to CSV.

Minimize your PDF and search for the Numbers app on your Mac via Spotlight.

👀 Note: Numbers is an app for opening CSV files on Mac.

Click the ‘New Document’ button.

Select the template you want from several options that Mac’s Numbers offers and click ‘Create.’

Paste the copied values to Numbers.

To save the file, click File > Save or press command + S . Give your file a name, select the saving location, and click ‘Save.’

Method 2. How to convert PDFs to CSV on Mac with PDFelement

When converting PDFs to CSV, use PDFelement for a quick format change.

Here’s a quick process to follow. 👇

After signing up and downloading the app, click ‘Convert PDF’ on the app’s home screen.

Remember, with PDFelement’s free plan, you can’t:

Remove watermarks
Perform OCR
Convert PDFs that have more than three pages
Batch convert documents

If you’re okay with all these conditions, click ‘Continue.’

Select the file you want to convert and click ‘Open.’

PDFelement will now ask you to save the PDF. Give the file a name and select a saving location.

In the Format drop-down, select Excel (.xlsx) and click ‘Convert.’

And just like that, PDFelement will convert your PDF into a CSV file.

Method 3. How to convert PDFs to CSVs online

If you have no time to download an app to convert PDFs to CSVs, use Convertio – an online PDF converter.

Here’s how the process works:

Visit Convertio’s PDF to CSV converter.

Click ‘Choose Files.’

Select the PDF you want to convert to CSV and click ‘Open.’

After the file has been uploaded onto Convertio, click ‘Convert.’

Click ‘Download’ to save the file to your Mac, and you’re done.

Read and edit documents faster with Macro

Although Macro can’t help you convert PDFs to CSVs, it can help you edit, annotate, split PDFs, and do much more.

If you deal with PDFs regularly, and converting PDFs to CSVs is not your only PDF-related task, you must download Macro.

Here are some features Macro offers for free:

Key Feature 1. PDF editing capabilities

Macro offers several editing and annotating capabilities.

With Macro’s free-to-use editing capabilities, you can:

Highlight, underline, and strikethrough text to annotate PDFs
Redact text to hide sensitive information before making your PDF accessible to all
Add watermarks and images to your PDFs
Add headers & footers to your documents
Comment on PDFs

Key Feature 2. AI capabilities

With Macro’s AI capabilities, you can spot potential costly errors in PDF files, like contracts, with suggested best actions to fix those errors.

Macro’s AI can also help you:

Summarize documents in a click
Answer PDF-related questions
Look up internal documents
Auto-complete paragraphs
Rewrite sections

Key Feature 3. Organizing capabilities

Professionals who deal with contracts often need to rearrange, split, or merge documents. Macro lets you do that all for free .

Merge two or more documents by adding files to the existing PDF document.

Rotate, delete, or export pages to new PDFs by right-clicking on a page.

Drag and drop pages to rearrange them.

Like what you see?

Download the free Macro app and start editing your PDFs.