How to turn a screenshot of a table into Excel
The short answer
In Excel for Microsoft 365, open the Data tab, choose From Picture, and give it the image from a file or the clipboard; Excel recognises the table, lets you review each cell, and inserts it. For a table or a chart that is on screen in another app, an AI reader such as ScreenFeel's To data lens returns the rows as a table and as CSV you can paste into any spreadsheet.
In Excel: Data from Picture
- Capture the table with Win+Shift+S so it is on the clipboard, or save it as an image file.
- In Excel, go to Data → From Picture, then choose Picture From Clipboard or Picture From File.
- Excel analyses the picture and shows a preview. Review the cells it flags as uncertain, correct them, and click Insert data.
Data from Picture is part of Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows 10 and 11, and on Mac. It recognises a limited set of languages — English and a number of European ones — so a table in Japanese, Chinese or Korean may not come through. It reads tables; it does not turn a chart into numbers.
When the table is on screen, not in a file
Most tables people want in a spreadsheet are somewhere awkward: a PDF report, a pricing page, a slide on a call, a dashboard that has no export button. Capturing it and going through Excel works, but if the table is dense or the type is small, expect to fix cells by hand.
ScreenFeel's To data lens reads the table straight off the screen and returns it exactly — same columns, same order, same values, headers included — as a table and again as a CSV block you can paste into Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. It runs on the Sharp tier, the larger budget that dense tables and tiny type need to be read correctly.
Charts: getting the numbers back out of a graph
Excel's picture import does not read charts. To data does: it reads the axis labels and tick values and returns one row per data point. When the exact values are not printed on the chart, it estimates them from the axis and says so in a single line under the table, so you know which numbers are read and which are inferred.
Check the numbers before you trust them
- Compare a total. If the source shows a sum, add up the imported column and compare.
- Watch decimal separators. 1.234 means one thousand two hundred and thirty-four in much of Europe and just over one in the US; check how your spreadsheet interpreted them.
- Look at merged cells and multi-line headers. These are where every method, human or machine, is most likely to misplace a value.
- Keep the screenshot. ScreenFeel keeps the capture next to the result in your local library, so you can check a cell against the original weeks later.
Questions people also ask
Can Excel convert a screenshot into a table?
Yes, Excel for Microsoft 365 can, with Data → From Picture, from an image file or from the clipboard. Review the cells it marks as uncertain before inserting the data, and expect trouble with languages it does not support, such as Japanese or Chinese.
Can I get the data out of a chart image?
Excel's picture import reads tables only. ScreenFeel's To data lens reads a chart from its axes and returns one row per data point, and it tells you when values are estimated rather than printed.
How do I paste a table from a screenshot into Google Sheets?
Google Sheets has no equivalent of Excel's Data from Picture. Convert the table to CSV first — for example with ScreenFeel's To data lens — then paste it into Sheets and use Data → Split text to columns if it lands in a single column.