Convert a password-protected bank statement PDF to Excel or CSV

Why statement PDFs have passwords

A statement shows your balances, your payees and often your address, so some banks protect the PDFs they send by email or provide for download. Opening one in a PDF viewer means typing the password. Most online converters then ask you to upload the locked file and, sometimes, the password too. That is exactly the step many people want to avoid.

What Tallyscope does with a protected PDF

Add the file as you would any other. When the PDF turns out to need a password, the file appears in the file list with the message "This PDF is password protected" and a field for the password. Type it and submit, and the file is read like any other statement: the transactions are found, merged into the table, and checked against the printed running balance.

If the password is wrong, the list says "That password was not accepted" and the field stays open so you can try again. Nothing is read until the password works. Until then the main area of the app shows a prompt to enter the password in the file list.

Where the password goes

The PDF is opened by the PDF reader that runs inside your browser tab. The password you type is handed to that reader on your device and is kept in the tab's memory. It is not written to disk by the app and is not sent to a server. It is discarded once the file opens, when you remove the file or clear the list, and when you close the tab.

The statement itself follows the same rule as on every other page of this site: it is read in your browser and not uploaded. The details, including the few network uses that exist, are on converting without uploading.

What it needs from you

• The password. Tallyscope does not guess, bypass or remove passwords. If you do not know it, it cannot open the file. If you are unsure what it is, your bank can tell you.
• One entry per file. The password is asked for each protected file, so a batch of statements that share a password still needs it entered for each one.

What you get after unlocking

A protected statement is not treated differently from an unprotected one once it is open. Text PDFs are read directly, using the position of each word to rebuild the table; scanned pages go through the built-in OCR. Each statement then gets a status, Verified, Partly verified, Needs review or Unverified, and rows that disagree with the balances are flagged with the amount the balance implies. How that works is explained in how verification works.

Protected files can be combined with others. Load a locked PDF from one account, an open PDF from another and a CSV from a third, and they land in the same table, with duplicate detection for overlapping statements.

Getting the data out

• Excel with a Transactions sheet, a Statements sheet and a Summary sheet: part of the Day pass and Pro plans. See PDF to Excel.
• CSV on every plan; the Free plan exports the first 25 rows. See PDF to CSV.
• PDF and JSON on the Day pass and Pro plans.

Up to 10 files can be loaded at once on the Free plan. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

Troubleshooting

• The password is rejected. Check capitalisation and keyboard layout, and that you are using the password for this file and not the one for your online banking login.
• The file opens in a viewer but not here. The error text in the file list says what went wrong. A corrupted download shows a different message, "This file is not a valid PDF or is corrupted", and re-downloading the statement usually fixes it.
• Rows are flagged after unlocking. That is the balance check doing its job. See what each flag means in the Review tab, or try the CSV or Excel version of the statement from your bank, which is the most reliable source when it is offered.

What this page does not claim

Tallyscope reads protected statements; it is not a tool for removing a password from a PDF you cannot open, and it does not save an unlocked copy of the original file. It produces a table of the transactions. Heavy blur or very low-resolution scans can leave rows wrong, and those rows are flagged rather than guessed.

Open Tallyscope and drop in the protected PDF; you will be asked for the password when it is needed.