Document converter

Which document tool do I need?

What a PDF is, and why that matters

A PDF is a finished page. It records exactly where every letter and picture sits, so it looks the same on every screen and every printer. That is its whole purpose, and it is why forms, contracts and certificates are sent as PDFs.

The price is that a PDF does not remember how it was made. It has no idea which lines form a paragraph or which numbers belong to a table. Turning a PDF back into something editable therefore involves some reconstruction, and no converter does it perfectly. The PDF to Word page says plainly what comes across and what does not.

Text PDFs and scanned PDFs

There are two kinds of PDF, and they behave very differently.

• A text PDF was saved from Word, a browser or another program. You can select its text with a finger or a mouse. Its words can be extracted.
• A scanned PDF is a photograph of each page. Selecting text does nothing, because there is no text, only a picture of it. It can be turned into pictures, but getting editable text needs text recognition (OCR), which these tools do not include.

To check which you have, open the PDF and try to select a word.

Making a PDF from photos

Phone photos of paperwork are the most common thing people need to turn into a PDF, for applications, claims and school work. JPG to PDF places each photo on its own page without re-compressing it, lets you put the pages in order and can fit them to A4 or US Letter paper.

Ebooks

EPUB is the standard ebook format. Its text reflows to fit the screen, which is ideal for reading and awkward for printing. EPUB to PDF fixes the book onto pages of the size you choose.

Two things to know. Ebooks bought from most stores are copy-protected and cannot be converted. And if your aim is to read on a Kindle, no conversion is needed: Amazon's Send to Kindle service accepts EPUB files directly, and the older MOBI format is no longer needed.

Working on the pages of a PDF

Most everyday PDF jobs do not change what is on a page. They change which pages there are and how they are arranged: joining files, taking pages out, turning them the right way up. The tools for these copy pages as they are. Nothing is redrawn, so text stays sharp and selectable and pictures keep their quality. That covers merge, split, extract, remove, rotate and reorder.

A second group adds something on top of each page: page numbers or a watermark. The original content underneath is untouched.

A third group redraws pages as pictures, because that is the only way to do the job: the strong setting of compress PDF and grayscale PDF. Those give up selectable text in exchange, and each page says so before you start.

What is not here

Converting Word, Excel or PowerPoint files to PDF is not offered. Those programs, and the free Google Docs and LibreOffice, do it themselves and do it better: open the file and choose Save as PDF or Download as PDF.

Also not offered: adding or removing a password, recognising text in scans (OCR), typing new text into a page, signing, and converting PDFs to spreadsheets or slides. Desktop PDF software is the right tool for those.

Questions

How do I edit a PDF?

To change the pages themselves, such as their order, direction or number, use the page tools above. If you need to change the wording, convert it with PDF to Word, edit the text and save it as a PDF again from your word processor.

How do I make a PDF smaller?

Use compress PDF. Its strong setting makes scans and photo-heavy files far smaller. If you only need part of the document, taking out the other pages shrinks it with no loss at all.

Can I convert a PDF to JPG and back?

Yes. PDF to JPG turns pages into pictures and JPG to PDF puts pictures into a PDF. The text will no longer be selectable after the round trip.

Can I convert an ebook for my Kindle?

You do not need to. Send the EPUB to your Kindle with Amazon's Send to Kindle service.