Participant

Answered

Unable to Convert PDF to Excel

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
September 27, 2025
6 replies
519 views

Hi,

I have a PDF file of size 56.4 MB stored locally on MacBook's storage. The file has 12,697 pages which is all text.

When I try to convert this PDF file to Excel, the Acrobat application simply hangs with no error messages. And at this point, I'm clueless what is going wrong, and how to fix this. I checked and my MacBook's memory usage is high, but less than the total memory of 16GB.

Can help and guidance is much helpful?

Peace!

Correct answer Randy Hagan

I might start by:

1. Save a copy of the original file.

2. Name it [filename] first page.pdf

3. Delete everything but the first page of the PDF. That means 12,696 pages have to go.

4. Try exporting that single page to Excel and see how it goes.

If it works, create another copy of the original PDF, delete all but pages 2-6, name it [filename] 2-6.pdf. Then try to export that and see what happens. If that works, take a copy of the original file and export the next 10 pages. Then 20, then 40, adding pages until you find the threshold where it doesn't work anymore. Back off incrementally from that point, then continue.

NOTE: Be sure to always work from a copy of the original file. If things go bad, your original file will be a safe fallback as long as you always work from a copy of the original file.

Right now we don't know if the system is choking from the process or because it's overdosing on processing your massive PDF file. The tests above will help us determine if it's one or the other, and give us insight on what we need to do from there. Let us know how the test above works out, and we'll do our best to help.

Hope this helps,

Randy

C

Carrie26723019c03z

Participant

Office of three here… HAVING THE SAME ISSUE. We have windows 11 and we have Mac. We have PAID SUBSCRIPTION; to export pdf. files. YET the newer M3 Mac we are unable to convert. Even if we open the app w Rosetta. The Intel (older) Mac works. Haven’t updated the version there. BUT M4 Mac keeps asking us to go online…?

Finally on the newer Mac converted to word doc. IMAGE pasted to a word doc. SO IS NOT WORKING. It should have been text or rich text. NOT IMAGE. Tried several times. I believe ADOBE forgot to add some plugin to accommodate M3 or M4 Macs.

Going online is not a solution, when the PAID USER already have a SUBSCRIPTION. Please ADOBE fix your apps.

Sincerely,

Jose L

BaniVerma

Community Manager

Hi @Carrie26723019c03z,

Thank you for reaching out, and we understand how frustrating it is to see PDF export behaving inconsistently across your team's machines, especially with an active paid subscription. There may actually be a few different things going on here across your Windows 11 machine, the older Intel Mac, and the two Apple Silicon Macs, so we'd like to narrow those down before pointing you anywhere.

On the M3 Mac, could you check the exact Acrobat product and version installed (Help > About Adobe Acrobat) and compare it with what's installed on the working Intel Mac? If they're on different versions or tracks, that's worth knowing before we go further.

On the M4 Mac, asking to "go online": could you share the exact wording of that message, and when it appears (at launch, or specifically when exporting)? For context, Acrobat supports Apple Silicon Macs natively, though macOS can sometimes show a Rosetta-related compatibility notice even when Acrobat is otherwise working normally: https://adobe.ly/4xjiMoF. On that M4 Mac, go to Applications, right-click Adobe Acrobat, and choose Get Info to see whether "Open using Rosetta" is checked, which indicates the mode it's actually running in.

On the Word export showing an image instead of text: are the source PDFs scanned or photographed pages, or were they created directly from text (for example, exported from Word)? Knowing that will help us give you an accurate next step.

Once we have these details, we can point you to the right next step instead of general troubleshooting.

Please share these details, and we'll take it from there.

Thanks,
^BS

C

Carrie26723019c03z

Participant

Good morning, the versions of ADOBE installed on each one are the same. Including the Win 11 computer here. Vers ild: 26.002.21901 for 64bits.

On both M3 and M4 desktops, finally I downloaded JAVA for desktops. vers 8. 503 updated. We didn't have before. The issue of converting to word, but pasting an image happened on both M3 and M4. So, I had to uninstall on both twice.

Just installed on M3 and finally worked. Converting into txt finally. Which is how I get into a clean excel page. The M4 also finally working. I believe it was a plugin missing during the installation.

Someone here insisted on JAVA, (did not think would be an issue) But apparently helped. Also, I right clicked (info) on Adobe app and click open w Rosetta. Not sure that would helped or not? But just be safe.

Hopefully with all now working… I won’t have issues on future update?

Thanks,

JoseL

Y

young_6776

Participating Frequently

test if I CAN USE THE ADOBE TO CONVERT PDF

夏天精油sds.pdf

酒店精油sds.pdf

Randy Hagan

Correct answer

Community Expert

I might start by:

1. Save a copy of the original file.

2. Name it [filename] first page.pdf

3. Delete everything but the first page of the PDF. That means 12,696 pages have to go.

4. Try exporting that single page to Excel and see how it goes.

If it works, create another copy of the original PDF, delete all but pages 2-6, name it [filename] 2-6.pdf. Then try to export that and see what happens. If that works, take a copy of the original file and export the next 10 pages. Then 20, then 40, adding pages until you find the threshold where it doesn't work anymore. Back off incrementally from that point, then continue.

NOTE: Be sure to always work from a copy of the original file. If things go bad, your original file will be a safe fallback as long as you always work from a copy of the original file.

Right now we don't know if the system is choking from the process or because it's overdosing on processing your massive PDF file. The tests above will help us determine if it's one or the other, and give us insight on what we need to do from there. Let us know how the test above works out, and we'll do our best to help.

Hope this helps,

Randy

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.