Tables are where PDF-to-anything-else converters reveal whether they actually work. Most produce text dumps where each row is concatenated into a sentence. Ours produces real Markdown tables — pipes, alignment, headers — that render correctly in every Markdown viewer.
The table problem in PDFs
PDF tables are visual constructs: rectangles drawn on a page, with text inside the rectangles. There's no schema saying "this is row 3 of column B"; the converter has to infer that from coordinates. Simple tables (single header row, regular cell sizes) are easy. Tables with merged cells, multi-row headers, financial-report-style nested rows, or rotated header text are the long tail where most converters fall apart.
Our table strategy
We detect tables via line-detection and whitespace clustering, then reconstruct cells based on the bounding boxes of text runs. Merged cells are flattened with the merged value repeated (so the GFM output renders correctly), with a comment marking the original merge for downstream tools that care. Multi-row headers are collapsed into a single header row using a separator (Q1 / Revenue). The result is GFM-valid Markdown that round-trips into spreadsheets cleanly.
Merged cells are flattened — the merged value is repeated across the cells it spans, so the GFM table renders correctly in any Markdown viewer. The original merge is annotated as a comment for tools that need it.
Can it handle multi-row headers?
Yes — multi-row headers are collapsed into a single header row using / as a separator (e.g. Q1 / Revenue). For the rare cases this isn't what you want, edit the resulting GFM table directly; the data underneath is correct.
What about financial reports with nested totals?
Rows representing subtotals and totals come through as regular rows with the totals marked in the leading cell ("Total Revenue" rather than just "Total"). Indentation in the original table is preserved as leading spaces inside the leading cell.
Will rotated or vertical text in headers convert correctly?
Most rotated text is correctly recognised (we OCR it if needed) and emitted as horizontal text in the GFM header. Stylised labels like axis-labelled vertical headers may need a manual review.
Can I export converted tables to spreadsheets?
GFM tables paste cleanly into Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers — the pipe-separated format is recognised by all three. From there, saving as CSV takes one click in any of the three.