Tips for Extracting Table from Image

Before getting to learn how to extract a table from an image, let’s explore some useful tips about extracting a table from an image. These tips can help you complete that task perfectly.

• Ensure the image has high resolution. To get clear table text and table lines, an image with high resolution is essential. In general, you should ensure that the image with a table has a resolution of at least 300 DPI. Otherwise, the table extractor can’t clearly detect and recognize the table structure and text, which may affect the final extract result.
• Edit the image only to leave the table. If the image not only contains the table but also has other content, you need to resize around the table to remove unnecessary content and borders.
• Choose a proper tool. A reliable image table extractor is indispensable if you need to get a clear and accurate table from an image. You need to use a tool equipped with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to detect and recognize tables, text, and other content in the image, and then export it to Excel, CSV, or other structured formats.
• Check the table data manually. Just to be sure, you’d better check that the data, text, and other content in the table are true. If there is any error, just correct it manually.

In the following paragraphs, I’ll introduce you to four effective ways to extract table from image on PCs and phones. Let’s continue to learn from the following tutorial.

Extract Table from Image via SwifDoo PDF

As its name suggests, SwifDoo PDF is a tool for working with PDFs. Can SwifDoo PDF extract a table from an image? Theoretically, SwifDoo PDF cannot directly extract a table from an image, as it can only OCR PDFs to convert PDF images to editable text. Fortunately, there is a workaround to get a spreadsheet table from an image using SwifDoo PDF. What you need to do is convert the image to a PDF. Then convert the image PDF to Excel or Word.

Now that it is not a direct way to extract a table from an image using SwifDoo PDF, why am I recommending it here? The primary reason is that it can keep the table formatting intact. It is equipped with an OCR engine to recognize the text in the image PDF, allowing the text to be edited and searched. Hence, you can correct the original error in the image. Though it requires one more step to convert the image to PDF, it is quite easy and fast to extract the table from the image using SwifDoo PDF. Below is how:

Step 1. Convert the image to PDF.

Install SwifDoo PDF on your Windows PC and then launch it to get to its main interface. Next, click the Create tab and select the From Image option to turn the image with a table into a PDF.

Step 2. Apply OCR to recognize the text and data in the image PDF.

Before applying OCR to the image PDF, you can use its editing features to refine it. Click on the image and select the Edit image option (a pen icon). You can choose to rotate, crop, or flip the image, make the image background transparent, or make other edits.

Next, click the OCR option and the Recognize Document window will appear. Then, customize the document language, output settings, and other settings. Click Apply to save the changes for OCR. The recognition process will finish in a few seconds.

Step 3. Export the table to Excel

When the recognition process finishes, the PDF will open in a new window of SwifDoo PDF. You can check the accuracy of the text and data in the table. If there is any error, you can use the editing features of SwifDoo PDF to edit the incorrect data or text. Once everything is set, you can open the SwifDoo menu, select Export PDF as, and click the Excel option.

Later, you can customize the export settings and click Start to extract the table from the image. When the process is over, click the Open File icon to open and view the table in Excel.

Explore other key features of SwifDoo PDF:

• Work as a PDF resizer to resize a PDF to A4 or other sizes.
• Convert PDF to or from Excel, PowerPoint, Word, CDA, or others.
• Add or remove a password from a PDF.
• Add Signature to PDF.
• …

Extract Table from Image via Wondershare PDFelement

Wondershare PDFelement is a great tool that features an OCR engine to recognize text in PDFs and images. Additionally, it supports converting PDFs to Excel, CSV, PowerPoint, Word, or other formats. Therefore, you can use Wondershare PDFelement to get a table from an image and save the table into an editable CSV or Excel spreadsheet.

Step 1. Visit the official Wondershare PDFelement website to download and install it on your computer. Run this great image table extractor, click the File tab, and select Open to import the target image file that has the table you want to extract.

Step 2. Click the Tool tab and select the OCR option. Then, a window about OCR settings will pop up. You can click the Scan to Editable Text option and customize other settings. Click Apply to activate the process to recognize the text and table lines in your image.

Step 3. Switch to the Convert tab and click the To Excel option. Select the folder where you want to save the Excel file and click the Save button.

Extract Table from Image via Microsoft Lens

How can you get a table from an image on Android? Microsoft Lens is the right tool! It lets you recognize the table in a photo and extract it from the photo. You can follow the exact steps below to complete the task using Microsoft Lens on your Android phone.

Step 1. If your Android phone doesn’t have Microsoft Lens, you can download it from the Google Play Store. Then, launch the phone image table extractor.

Step 2. At the bottom toolbar of Microsoft Lens, hit the Actions option to select the Table option. Here, you can choose to upload the image from your local gallery or snap a new photo with the phone camera.

Step 3. Microsoft Lens will automatically crop the image to only leave the table area. If you want to customize the crop area, you can tap and drag the corner handles. Once you are satisfied with the table area, tap the Continue icon. Then, Microsoft Lens will start to extract the table from the photo.

Step 4. Microsoft Lens offers you three options. One is Copy that enables you to copy and paste the table into other applications, such as Word or OneNote. The second one is Share, which allows you to share the extracted table via email or other applications. The last option is the Save option to export the extracted table as a Word, PowerPoint, or PDF on your Android phone or OneDrive.

Extract Table from Image via ComPDF

ComPDF is a comprehensive PDF tool that can work on various platforms. In this post, I want to introduce the online version of ComPDF. It not only allows you to obtain the table from PDFs or pictures, but also enables you to extract text from PDFs or pictures.

Step 1. Go to the PDF tools website of ComPDF and choose the Extract Table Only option.

Step 2. Click the Select your file button to load your image from your device. Alternatively, you can click the Dropbox icon to upload your photo from your Dropbox account.

Step 3. Here, you can choose to save the extracted table as a JSON, Excel, or CSV file. Next, click the Extract button. Once the extraction process is over, you can download the extracted photo.

To Wrap Things Up

Mastering the skill to obtain a table from a photo is important, as it enables you to turn a table from non-editable to editable. Also, it can reduce manual errors and enhance work efficiency. This post provides you with four ways to extract table from image. You can select a proper image table extractor and have a try.