Convert an ADCB Statement to Excel

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank statement conversion, bilingual Arabic and English layouts, and AED formatting.

ADCB statements are frequently bilingual, with Arabic and English sharing the page. That produces a specific extraction problem worth understanding.

Mixed text direction

Arabic runs right to left. English and the numerals run left to right. When both appear in one document, the order in which text fragments are stored inside the PDF may not match the order you see on the page.

A converter that joins fragments in storage order produces scrambled descriptions — words in the wrong sequence, or Arabic and English interleaved. Ordering fragments by their actual coordinates on the page rather than by storage order fixes it.

Arabic-Indic numerals

Some Gulf statements print amounts in Arabic-Indic numerals (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩) rather than Western ones. These are different Unicode characters from 0–9 and will not parse as numbers without conversion.

Where a statement uses them, they need mapping to Western digits before amount parsing. Otherwise every amount is rejected and the file appears to contain no transactions.

AED formatting

ADCB amounts use commas as thousands separators and a period as the decimal — the English convention. Some layouts print the currency code inside the amount cell, which needs stripping before parsing.

What the ADCB export contains

In the fileWhat you get
ADCB's own columnsEvery heading as printed, in the same order, value date included where printed
DatesExactly as printed, with nothing reformatted
DescriptionsArabic and English text as it comes out of the PDF, with wrapped lines joined into one cell
AmountsAs printed, AED code included where the cell prints one; the balance check reads the figure past the code
A Completeness sheetEvery row checked against the printed running balance, and the statement's own totals where it prints them

Salary and WPS transactions

UAE salaries are paid through the Wage Protection System, and WPS credits carry a distinctive descriptor identifying the employer and the payment batch.

For anyone verifying income — a landlord, a lender, a visa process — those rows are the ones that matter, and they are reliably identifiable by their descriptor rather than needing to be picked out by amount.

Frequently asked questions

Will Arabic descriptions be preserved?

Yes, as the text comes out of the PDF. Compare one against the statement: on a bilingual page, right-to-left text is the part most likely to come out in the wrong order.

How do I identify salary credits?

WPS descriptors identify wage payments distinctly, so filtering to those rows gives a clean salary history.

Are other UAE banks supported?

The reader works from the table on the page rather than a list of banks, so a statement from any UAE bank is read the same way. The Completeness sheet tells you whether yours came out right.

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