Whether you are a data analyst, a student, or a business professional, you may have faced the need to manually re-enter data from an image into a spreadsheet or Sheet within tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. While there are online sites designed to facilitate this process by recognizing the content in images and providing a copy in the same format as the data table, they often require uploading images to external servers that may not be trusted, and the results are often below expectations. Fortunately, if you are using Windows 11, you can rely on the basic tool for screen capture “Snipping Tool”, where users can benefit from the new feature “Copy as Table” to extract data tables from screen captures and paste them directly into office programs using artificial intelligence. Let’s explore how to use it in detail.
new “Copy as Table” feature for extracting data tables from screen captures and pasting them directly into office programs using artificial intelligence, so let’s see how to use it in detail.
Windows 11 includes an enhanced version of the Snipping Tool, which many believe is only for capturing screen images and making some simple edits before saving. However, fortunately, this is not accurate. In addition to easily recording screen videos, the tool offers additional features that many may not be aware of, most of which we have highlighted in the article: 8 amazing features in Snipping Tool that you are not using.
Today, we are exploring another feature recently added to the tool called “Copy as Table,” which is essentially part of the “Text Actions” feature in the latest versions of Snipping Tool, enabling it to recognize text appearing in screen captures accurately with the help of artificial intelligence, allowing for extraction or editing. In the case of the “Copy as Table” feature, the tool will identify the rows and columns of the data table within the screen capture and then copy it in the same format for easy pasting into Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets without the need for manual data entry.
Updating the Snipping Tool App
Make sure to download the latest version of the Snipping Tool app to ensure the success of the method explained in this article. Specifically, the “Copy as Table” feature is available in the app starting from version “11.2409.23.0,” currently available for all versions of Windows 11 via the Microsoft Store. So all you need to do is open the Microsoft Store and go to the Library section, click on Get Updates, and wait to check for new updates for the installed apps and update them automatically. Alternatively, you can go directly to the Snipping Tool page on the store and click on the Update button.
Using the “Copy as Table” Feature
All you need to do initially is display the data table you want to extract on the screen in front of you, whether within an online document, a PDF file, or any other file containing rows and columns with data. Then, open the Snipping Tool application through the Start menu or search for it after pressing the Win + S keys together. Once the tool window appears, click the New button, then select the area of the screen containing the data table. It’s preferable here to focus the selection on the table data only and not the program window displaying the entire table, or else all the other texts will be added while copying the table.
Once you capture the screen, click on the preview that appears in the Notifications area to display the image within the built-in editor of the Snipping Tool. Here you’ll notice the Text Actions button in the top toolbar, allowing the Snipping Tool to recognize any text within the image and interact with it, including the data table. Click on this button and wait a few moments for the screen capture content to be read. Then click on the “Copy as Table” option at the top, allowing the tool to analyze the image and automatically identify the structure of the table, including the rows and columns.
After copying the table data, open the program where you want to paste it, then add the copied data (either by right-clicking and choosing Paste or by pressing Ctrl + V on the keyboard). The data table will appear in the program in its proper structure, as shown in the attached image above. This program can be Microsoft Excel for analyzing and processing data, Google Sheets, or any program designed for working with digital data tables. In all cases, the data will be pasted into the table in an organized and formatted manner, ready for editing.
