How to copy a table from a screenshot to Excel on Mac
Press ⌘ ⇧ 2, choose Table in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and drag over the table, whether it is in a screenshot, a PDF, a web page or a shared screen. Then click a cell in Excel and press ⌘ V: every value lands in its own cell. Recognition happens on your Mac.
How to do it with Copyable
Press ⌘ ⇧ 2 and choose Table
The screen freezes and a toolbar appears at the bottom. Choose Table there before you drag.
Drag over the table
Include the header row and leave out titles and footnotes around the table. Clear rows and columns give the cleanest result.
Paste into Excel
Click the top-left cell where the table should start and press ⌘ V. Rows and columns are filled cell by cell.
Without Copyable
The free ways, and where they stop working. If one of them covers what you need, you don’t need an app.
Data from Picture in Excel
Excel for Microsoft 365 has a Data from Picture feature that turns a picture of a table into cells, if it is available in your version.
Where it stops: Needs a Microsoft 365 subscription, works only inside Excel, and you need the picture as a file or on the clipboard first.
Live Text in Preview, Photos and Quick Look
Open the image in Preview or Photos, or select it in Finder and press Space, then drag across the text as in a document and press ⌘ C. Live Text is built into macOS and free.
Where it stops: Only in Apple’s apps and Safari. An image inside Chrome, Slack, Telegram or a PDF reader has to be saved and opened in Preview first.
Tips for Excel
- If numbers paste as text (aligned left, with a warning marker), select them and use Convert to Number.
- Excel reads pasted numbers and dates with your Mac’s region settings. A table with 1.234,56 pasted on a Mac set to US formats stays text; change the format or the region to fix it.
- Leading zeros in IDs and postal codes can be dropped when Excel turns them into numbers. Format the column as Text before pasting if they matter.
- Merged cells and cells with several lines of text may need tidying after you paste. Tables with clear rows and columns work best.
Questions
Do formulas come across?
No, only values. A picture of a table has no formulas in it.
Does it keep formatting like bold or colors?
No. You get the values in cells; bold, colors and borders aren’t copied.
Can I paste into Excel on the web?
Yes. Paste into Excel in the browser the same way.
Is the table uploaded to read it?
No. Copyable reads it on your Mac with Apple’s Vision framework and makes no network requests.
Copy text from anything on your screen
Copyable reads the text in any area you select with ⌘ ⇧ 2, on your Mac, without uploading anything. $4.99 once, plus tax where it applies. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel.
Buy for $4.99