Are you a Mac user and feel frustrated to import data in your PDF bank statements into accounting software like QuickBooks? Converting PDF to CSV on Mac can be the solution, because CSV files integrate seamlessly with all major finance programs while PDF is more for sharing and printing.
In this post, we’ll elaborate on how to convert PDF to CSV on Mac in 7 trustworthy ways, so that you can manage your finances with facility.
Cisdem PDF Converter OCR
Free Download macOS 10.14 or later
Sometimes, the bank will only send you bank statements in PDF format. In such a situation, you’ll need a specialized PDF converter to convert a view-friendly PDF to an editable CSV file. To help you find the best PDF to CSV converter apps for your needs, here we have compiled a list of top picks on Mac, which are selected basing on prices, features, user interface and more.
The first recommendation is Cisdem PDF Converter OCR, which is rated by numerous users as a must-have office application. With this software at your disposal, you will find it simple to fast convert PDF to CSV files in large quantity of files at a time. All the tables and data in the original PDF will be retained perfectly in the converted CSV file and keep the same formatting.
Better still, even you import the scanned PDF files into the Cisdem program, it will automatically start the OCR engine to turn scans to editable CSV files. Totally 25 languages can be recognized.
In addition, an attractive benefit of Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is that it allows for outputting a wide range of file formats besides CSV.
Free Download macOS 10.14 or later 
ProperSoft has provided a tool named PDF2CSV, specifically designed for converting PDF to CSV on Mac. It can correctly parse the data in bank statements, credit card records, invoices and more financial PDF documents. Moreover, it offers multiple options to add customization on transactions before exporting it to CSV, such as choosing dates style and changing +/- for all transactions.
But the bad news is that it doesn’t allow for recognizing scanned or image-based files and processing bulk files. And free trial converts up to 10 transactions per file.
As its name suggests, this software is a professional PDF converter that can help you to convert native and scanned PDF files into editable Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Images(JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF), EPUB, etc. A large quantity of PDF files can be converted at one go. Besides, it offers a generous 15-day trial period to check the performance of the conversions. But note that all the output files of trial version will be watermarked.
Adobe Acrobat has won a good reputation in PDF field for a long time thanks to its full-fledged features. Almost all tasks concerning PDF files can be completed in Adobe--edit PDF, convert PDF, protect PDF, unlock PDF and so on. Since it is more of a PDF editor than a PDF converter, the output formats it offers are not as complete, with only several common formats supported. You have to convert a PDF bank statement into an Excel file, then save Excel as CSV in Microsoft Excel, Numbers, etc.
From the above tutorial, we can see that except for ProperSoft that can directly convert PDF to CSV on Mac, other software will convert PDF to Excel first, and then export Excel to CSV in Numbers. But spending $149.99/y to do such a conversion is not cost effective. So here we've summarized the pros and cons of 4 applications in a table, from which you can choose the best one for your needs.
| Software | Cisdem PDF Converter OCR | ProperSoft | Aiseesoft PDF Converter | Adobe Acrobat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Batch Convert | √ | × | √ | × |
| Convert scanned PDF | √ | × | √ | √ |
| More output formats | 20+ | √ | 10+ | 10+ |
| Create PDF | √ | × | × | √ |
The aforementioned applications are undoubtedly the first choices to carry on the PDF-to-CSV conversion, but some people may have a tight budget and expect a free method. While free solutions won’t have all the bells and whistles of paid software, it still seems well worthwhile to have a try.
As we all know, Preview is the native and default image and PDF viewer on Mac. It is a completely free application where you can manually copy the tabular data in a PDF and paste it to a blank CSV or Excel document. This method needs patience and time.
To be honest, online solutions should be the last resort to convert PDF bank statements to CSV files. Bank statements typically contain lots of confidential information, like account holder’s name, address, number, spending over a period and so on. How terrible it would be if this private information was leaked to a third-party service.
In order to reduce the risk, we have picked out two relatively safer online tools based on user reviews. They are ZAMZAR and ASPOSE.
Why to choose them:
File limits: It allows to import a file up to 2 MB and convert 2 files per day.
File limits: It supports doing only 2 tasks per day.
CSV, the abbreviation of Comma-separated values, is a file format aiming to store tabular data including numbers and text in plain text. Each line in the CSV file represents one data record. It is a great way to achieve the transfer of data information between different databases, since it can be directly imported into various accounting applications, such as QuickBooks, Quicken, Xero and more.
Once you have a CSV file, you can import it into QuickBooks easily. Just run QuickBooks on you Mac, go to File > Open to upload the CSV file. In the program, you can edit the content as you like, go back to File > Save As to export it as QBO file format.
Well, we have introduced 7 doable methods to help you to convert PDF to CSV on Mac, which one do you like best? Let us know in the comments.
Carolyn has always been passionate about reading and writing, so she joined Cisdem as an editor as soon as she graduated from university. She focuses on writing how-to articles about PDF editing and conversion.
