Summary

Do you have a printed table or data set that needs to be retyped and edited? Don’t waste time copying it manually into Excel—instead, use a little-known feature in the Excel mobile app to do this in just a few minutes.

Yes, you canscan data onto your computer and edit it there, but having your phone to hand as an instant mini-scanner and letting Excel do the hard work for you is certainly the best way to go. What’s more, PDFs do not always convert accurately into Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, so you’ll end up spending more time on your work if you go down that route.

The Blank Workbook option in the welcome screen of the iPhone Excel app.

I’ll use my iPhone 14’s Excel app to show you this process, but you can follow exactly the same process if you’re using the Android Excel app.

Launch the Excel mobile app and create a blank workbook.

The Excel mobile app ribbon icon and the three dot menu are highlighted.

Open the lower ribbon (see icon 1 in the screenshot below), and then tap the three dots in the bottom-right corner (or thedownarrow in the same location on an Android device).

Tap the green “Home” drop-down menu and select “Insert.”

The Insert menu in the iPhone Excel app.

Tap “Data From Picture.”

Excel will now prompt you to take a picture of the printed data by automatically opening the camera app. Align your phone with the data you want to capture (make sure you use the alignment guides on your screen), and press the shutter.

Follow the instructions at the bottom of the screen to crop your image, and click “Confirm” when you’re happy.

The Data From Picture option in the Excel app.

Excel will then begin the process of extracting your data to the app, and this might take a few seconds.

You will then see a preview of the data it has extracted. Any issues that Excel experienced in converting the image to data will be highlighted in red, which you’re able to review in the next step after tapping “Insert.”

An iPhone’s camera view of the data to be captured in the picture, with the guiding alignment handles emphasized.

Excel will tell you how many items you need to review. If more than one item needs to be reviewed, tap “Review All,” and address each issue manually. Excel will often falsely identify issues when, in fact, the data has been exported accurately. In this case, you can tap “Open Anyway.”

Once complete, you will see the data in the blank spreadsheet you created at the start of the process. you may then reformat the data to your choosing.

The Excel app confirming the picture positioning and cropping, and the Confirm option highlighted.

If you’re using an iPhone, another similar and equally handy feature is theLive Text tool, which will identify words in an image and convert them into plain text for you to copy.

The Excel app with a message on the screen reading ‘Extracting Data.'

The Excel app with a preview of the data extracted from the image, and part of the data highlighted in red. The Insert button at the bottom of the screen is selected.

The Excel app showing items that require reviewing following extraction, with the Open Anyway and Review options displayed underneath.

An Excel spreadsheet in the mobile app showing data extracted from a paper copy.