PDF to Word

Read this first: you get the text, not the layout

This tool takes the text out of your PDF and puts it into a Word (.docx) file that you can edit. It does not copy the look of the page. Pictures, tables, columns, fonts and colors are not carried over. Every line of the PDF becomes a separate line in Word, in plain text.

That is useful when you need the words, for example to edit an old letter or reuse part of a report. It is not the right tool if the Word file must look like the PDF.

Step by step

1. Add your PDF. Drop it on the box above, or click the box and pick it. The tool works with one PDF at a time. If you drop several, only the first one is used. If the file is not a PDF, a message tells you so.
2. Click Convert to Word. The tool reads the pages one by one. A progress bar shows how far it has got. If some pages have no text, a warning names them.
3. Download the file. Click Download DOCX. The file keeps your PDF's name, so report.pdf becomes report.docx.
4. Open it and check it. Use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice or any other program that opens .docx files.

What you get in the Word file

The tool uses the pdf.js library to read the text on each page. It groups the pieces of text into lines by their height on the page, and puts a space between two pieces when there is a gap between them. Then the docx library writes each line into a new Word document. All of this happens in your browser. The PDF is not uploaded.

Which PDFs convert well

Good results

• Letters, notices and simple reports that were made in Word or Google Docs and saved as PDF.
• Articles, essays and ebooks with one column of text.

Poor results

• Scanned pages and photos of documents. They hold a picture of the text, not the text itself.
• Invoices and bank statements. It is hard to see which number belongs to which column.
• Newsletters, brochures and two-column papers. Lines can get mixed.
• Password-protected PDFs. If the file needs a password to open, the tool shows a message that the PDF is protected and makes no Word file.

Check if your PDF has real text

Before you convert, open the PDF in your browser or in a PDF reader. Try to select one sentence with your mouse. Or search for a word with Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac).

• If the words highlight one by one, or the search finds the word, the PDF has real text. This tool can read it.
• If the whole page highlights as one block, or the search finds nothing, the page is an image. This tool will find no text on it.

Some scanners add a hidden OCR text layer. Then the text comes across, with any mistakes the scanner made.

Scanned PDFs need OCR

The tool checks every page for text. If the whole PDF has none, it shows a warning instead of making an empty Word file. If only some pages are scans, it names them, and in the Word file those pages only have the page label and the line “(No text content on this page)”. Converting again will not help. You need OCR (optical character recognition). OCR reads the letters from a picture.

You can do this with two of our tools. First, turn the pages into images with PDF to Image. Then read the text from each image with Image to Text (OCR). Copy the result into Word. Check it carefully, because OCR can mix up similar letters, such as l and 1, or O and 0.

Cleaning up the result in Word

1. Join broken lines. A sentence that ran over two lines in the PDF is now two paragraphs. Click at the end of the first line and press Delete. For a long passage in Microsoft Word, select it and open Replace. Find ^p and replace it with a space. This joins everything you selected, so press Enter again where each real paragraph should start.
2. Fix split words. A word that was split with a hyphen at the end of a line stays split. After you join the lines, search for a hyphen followed by a space, and fix each one.
3. Remove the page labels. Delete the gray “Page 2”, “Page 3” lines if you do not need them. If you delete the whole line, the page break before it usually goes too, and the text flows on.
4. Set the headings again. Click each heading and choose Heading 1 or Heading 2 from the Styles list. Then the navigation pane will work.
5. Rebuild tables by hand. Insert a new table, then type or paste the values in. Use the PDF as your guide.

Common mistakes

• Expecting a copy of the layout. This tool gives you the text. If the document must look the same, keep it as a PDF, or save the pages as pictures with PDF to Image.
• Sending the Word file without reading it. Lines can be in the wrong order, and repeated headers, footers and page numbers are still there. Compare it with the PDF once.
• Trusting numbers from tables. Check every figure against the original PDF.
• Converting a long file when you need a few pages. Take out only those pages first with Split PDF. The Word file will be shorter and easier to clean up.