Lab Datasheet Builder
Drop in water lab report PDFs — get back a clean, structured Excel datasheet, ready for analysis. This is not a mechanical PDF-to-Excel converter. Ordinary converters dump messy tables that leave you hours of cleanup and manual copy-paste into your own spreadsheet format. This tool extracts the actual lab data — location, sampling date, parameter, laboratory, method, PQL/RL, result, unit — and places it directly into a designed datasheet: one row per result, consistent columns. Pick your lab in Step 1 (ATECH and WESSLING layouts built in); anything else goes through a quick generic setup. Skip the cleanup — go straight to the finished spreadsheet.
Your datasheet columns
Every extraction lands in these 10 consistent columns — the same layout no matter which lab the report came from.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Location | Sampling location (e.g. sample description / client sample ID) |
| Sampling Date | When the sample was collected |
| Type | Analyte group (e.g. Volatile Organic Compounds, Total Metals) |
| Parameter | Analyte / constituent name |
| Laboratory | Lab that ran the analysis |
| Method | Analytical method (e.g. USEPA 524.2) |
| PQL/RL | Practical quantitation / reporting limit |
| Result | As reported (ND, numeric value, …) |
| Unit | mg/L, pg/L, … |
| File Name | Which PDF each row came from |
How it works
- Pick the lab. Select the laboratory that issued the reports in Step 1. Each lab in the library has its report layout built in.
- Drop in your PDFs. Each file is read locally with an in-browser PDF engine. No uploads, no waiting on a server.
- Known lab? Zero setup. Rows are extracted automatically — one row per result, mapped into the 10 datasheet columns.
- Lab not listed? Two-minute setup, once. Choose “Other”, pick which table is the results table, confirm the column mapping (we pre-guess it from the headers), and the tool remembers that lab on your device. Next time, it is automatic too.
- Download one Excel file. All reports combined into a single “Lab Data” sheet with the columns above. Spot-check the preview against the original PDFs before relying on it for compliance records.
Will it read my PDF? Text PDFs vs scanned PDFs
Text PDF — yes. Most lab reports emailed to you are exported straight from software. The file contains real text: open it and try selecting a line with your mouse. If the text highlights, this tool can read it.
Scanned / image PDF — not yet. If the report is a photo or scan of paper, the file holds no text at all — just pixels — and your mouse cannot select anything. The tool will tell you so instead of guessing. Convert it first with OCR software (e.g. Adobe Acrobat’s “Recognize Text”), then drop in the converted file. Built-in scanned-PDF support is planned for Pro.
Quick test: open the PDF, drag your mouse across a line of results. Selectable = text PDF = good to go.
How the lab library grows
Need your own custom columns?
Custom column sets, larger batches, and scanned-PDF (OCR) support are coming in Pro. Leave your email and we will let you know when it launches.
Limitations