# Pull the Table Out of a Screenshot

> Paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard (Ctrl+V) or drop an image of any table — a dashboard, a PDF page, a report someone sent as a picture. OCR reads it on your device and the words are reassembled into rows and columns by their positions. Copy the result as TSV and paste into Excel or Google Sheets with columns intact, or download a CSV.


Live tool: https://lofttools.com/tools/image-tools/screenshot-to-csv

Category: Image Tools

## How it works

1. **Paste or drop the screenshot** — Press Ctrl+V anywhere on the page to paste a screenshot from the clipboard, or drop a PNG/JPEG of the table.
2. **Check the rebuilt table** — Rows and columns are reconstructed from the word positions. Misaligned screenshots may need a cleaner crop around the table.
3. **Copy into your spreadsheet** — Copy for Excel/Sheets keeps the columns, or download a CSV file.

## FAQ

### How do columns get detected?

Word positions on the image are clustered — words that line up vertically across rows form a column, and wide horizontal gaps split cells. Clean, grid-aligned tables reconstruct almost perfectly; ragged layouts may merge or split the odd cell.

### What gives the best results?

Crop the screenshot to just the table before pasting, at readable size. Headers and gridlines are fine; screenshots of spreadsheets, dashboards, and PDF tables all work.

### Why TSV for the clipboard?

Tab-separated text is what Excel and Google Sheets parse on paste — each tab starts a new column, so the table lands as cells, not one blob of text.

### Is the screenshot sent to a server?

No. OCR runs in your browser. Screenshots often contain data nobody should be sending to a third party — that is exactly why this tool works locally.

## Tips

- **Ctrl+V works directly (`Ctrl + V`)** — Take the screenshot, switch to this tab, paste. No file needed — the clipboard image is read in place.
- **Crop to the table first** — Surrounding UI — toolbars, sidebars, chat bubbles — becomes junk rows. A tight crop around the table is the single best accuracy move.
- **Paste into Sheets with columns intact** — Use "Copy for Excel / Sheets" — it copies tab-separated text, which spreadsheet apps split into proper cells.

## Privacy — what we do not do

This tool runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly. Your file never reaches a Loft Tools server. Specifically:

- **No upload.** The file bytes load into the browser tab's memory and process on your own CPU. Open DevTools → Network and observe zero outbound requests carrying file data while Pull the Table Out of a Screenshot runs.
- **No AI training on your file.** Loft does not train models. We could not train on a file we cannot see.
- **No content scanning.** No virus, copyright, or content-moderation pass against your file. The bytes are not accessible to us.
- **No server-side log of file contents, filenames, or EXIF metadata.** Cloudflare edge captures URL and truncated IP for abuse defense (standard CDN behaviour). Cloudflare Web Analytics records anonymous page hits, no cookies, no PII. Nothing about your file content reaches any log.
- **No retention.** Close the tab and the file leaves browser memory. No backups exist on our side because no copy ever existed on our side.
- **No account.** No email, no signup, no auth, no telemetry tied to you.
- **Offline-capable after first visit** (PWA). Once you've loaded a tool, it caches; later sessions work without internet. For high-sensitivity files, run the tool once online to warm the cache, then disconnect before processing.

Compare with upload-based services: each transmits your file to a processing server. Even over HTTPS, each has logs, retention windows, and subpoena exposure. Loft has none of these because the server architecture does not include your file.

## More

- All tools: https://lofttools.com/tools
- Category: https://lofttools.com/tools/image-tools
- LLM index: https://lofttools.com/llms.txt