The problem isn't your PDF. It's the tools you're using to get the data out.
You've done the right troubleshooting. You tried Power Query's "Get Data From PDF." You tried Adobe's export. You tried copy-paste with formatting, and copy-paste without it. Every method gave you the same result: a mess. The formatting broke. The 13 pages collapsed into one jumbled table. You spent more time cleaning the data than you would have spent typing it in by hand. That frustration is real, and it's common.
Let's be direct about what's happening. Traditional spreadsheet tools treat PDFs as a final output format, not a source. When Power Query imports a multi-page PDF, it sees one continuous document and tries to flatten it into a single table. Adobe's export assumes the PDF's layout is fixed and errors when it isn't. Copy-paste preserves visual formatting but not structural logic. None of these tools were designed to understand that each page is its own independent table that needs to stay separate. They were built for a world where data arrives in neat rows and columns, not trapped inside a locked document.
What you need is a tool that respects the original structure. An AI-native spreadsheet can do that. It reads the PDF page by page, recognizes each table as a distinct object, and lets you bring all 13 tables into one Excel tab without merging them. You keep the separation you need while still having everything in one place for analysis. No formatting loss. No manual re-splitting. No "it works until you hit refresh."
This isn't about replacing your current workflow. It's about adding a smarter first step. Instead of fighting the PDF to extract data, you let the tool do the interpretation. Then you work with clean, structured tables from the start. That changes the equation: you spend time analyzing the data, not rescuing it.
Stop patching a broken process. Find a tool that treats your PDF as a set of pages, not a single blob. The data is already there, organized the way you need it. You just need to let it stay that way.