Extract data from PDFs
Pull dates, amounts and names from a folder of invoices or bills into Excel.
The prompt
Read every PDF in ~/Documents/Bills. For each one, extract the date, vendor, invoice number, total amount and tax. Put the results in a new Excel file called bills-summary.xlsx with one row per PDF and a total at the bottom. List any PDF you could not read.
How to use it
- Make sure Shellway is connected in ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor.
- Paste the prompt and change the folder names or paths to match your computer.
- Review the plan your AI shows before you confirm any changes.
Tips
- Scanned PDFs need OCR. Ask it to check whether tesseract is installed first.