How to extract data from a screenshot

Decide what the rows should be

Before extracting anything, name the unit of the data you want: one row per order, per product, per day, per invoice line. Everything else follows from that decision, and it is the thing an automated tool cannot infer for you when the layout is not already a grid.

If a single screenshot contains one record — a receipt, for instance — then several screenshots of the same kind of screen become several rows of the same table.

Two shapes of source, two approaches

• Already a table: extract directly, one capture to one table, and merge captures when the table is long.
• Card or label layouts: capture each record's screen, upload them together, and align by headers so the shared labels become columns.

Extracting with GridFiller

1. 1. Collect your captures

   Keep them consistent — same screen, same zoom, same visible fields, so the extracted columns match.

2. 2. Upload as one job

   Up to 20 files, up to 20MB each; PNG, JPG, WEBP, and PDF.

3. 3. Align by headers

   For repeated screens this is usually the right strategy: matching labels are collected under the same column even when their positions differ.

4. 4. Shape the result in the grid

   Rename columns to the field names you actually want, and delete anything that came along from the interface.

5. 5. Export

   CSV for imports, XLSX for analysis.

What tends to go wrong

• Inconsistent captures — one screen showing a field the others do not, producing a sparse column.
• Interface text such as button labels being picked up as data; remove it in the editor.
• Values that only make sense with their unit ('2 days', '£14.20') — decide whether you want the unit in the cell.
• Truncated text with an ellipsis, which cannot be recovered from the image at all.
• Timestamps shown relative ('3 hours ago') rather than absolute.

A note on judgement

Extraction gives you a first draft that is faster and usually more consistent than typing, but the source image sets a ceiling on what is recoverable. If a value is cut off or blurred beyond reading in the screenshot, no tool can restore it — go back to the source system for those fields.

Related reading

• Extract a table from an image — for sources that are already laid out as a grid.
• Screenshot to CSV — when the extracted data feeds another system.
• How to turn a screenshot into a spreadsheet — the general workflow end to end.