PDF to Excel without leaving Excel: the myocr.app add-in is on the Microsoft Marketplace

Why an add-in, when Excel already imports PDFs

Excel's built-in "Get Data from PDF" works well on one kind of file: a PDF with real text inside, made by software. Hand it a scanned statement, a photographed receipt or a supplier's invoice printed and rescanned, and it finds nothing to import. That is where most of the copy-and-paste in accounting still happens: eyes on the PDF, fingers on the keyboard, one number at a time.

The myocr.app add-in puts real OCR inside Excel. You open the document in a side pane, draw a box around what you need, and the recognised value lands in the selected cell. Since 11 October it is published on the Microsoft Marketplace, which changes one practical thing: you no longer need a manifest file to install it.

Install it in 30 seconds

1. Open Excel and go to Home → Add-ins (in some versions: Insert → Get Add-ins).
2. Search for myocr and click Add. The listing is called "PDF OCR and Snip for myocr.app", published by MAD.AI SRL.
3. A new OCR & Snip button appears in the Home tab. Click it to open the pane.
4. Click Sign in with myocr and log in with your myocr.app account. Nothing else to configure.

There is nothing to download and nothing to update: an Office add-in loads from the web every time, so you always run the current version. It works in Excel for Windows, Excel for Mac and Excel on the web, on Microsoft 365 and Excel 2021 or later. If your organisation blocks the store, the two-minute manifest install still works as a fallback.

The first snip

Load a PDF or an image in the pane, click the cell where you want the value, then draw a box around it on the document: a total, an invoice number, a date, a VAT ID. The text is recognised and written into the cell. Numbers arrive as numbers, so they sum and sort like anything else you typed.

The cell also keeps a link back to the exact spot on the document. Months later, click it and the add-in reopens the file and highlights the region the value came from. For anyone who has to show where a figure originated, this is the part that matters most.

Whole tables, scans and photos included

Select a region that contains a table, or the whole page, and the add-in writes rows and columns into the sheet starting from the selected cell. This is the step Excel's own importer cannot take on scanned pages. Bank statements get an extra check: opening balance plus credits minus debits is compared with the closing balance, and the result is written next to the transactions, the same balance check you get on the website.

Two smaller tools save a surprising amount of time. Sum snip draws one box over several amounts and puts the total in a cell. Re-check from source reads the document again and marks each cell ✓ or ✗ depending on whether it still matches, useful after someone has edited the sheet.

Batches of similar documents

When you have fifty invoices from the same supplier, you do not want to draw fifty boxes. Define the fields once (number, date, total, VAT) as a template, load the whole batch in the pane, and the add-in extracts one row per document. The pane keeps a searchable list of the loaded files so you can jump between them.

What it costs

The add-in runs on a myocr.app subscription: Starter at €19 a month for 1,200 pages, or Pro at €49 a month for 3,500 pages. Subscription pages also work for conversions on the website. Before subscribing you can try it with 5 free pages; a verified card is required for the trial, as for API keys, but nothing is charged. Note that pay-as-you-go page packs bought on the website do not apply to the add-in today.

The documents you process go through myocr.app's servers for recognition, so the add-in needs an internet connection and does not work offline.