PDF to Word
Turn the text of a PDF into a Word document you can edit. Headings and paragraphs are rebuilt. Pictures, tables and the page design are left behind.
How the files you choose are handled is set out in the privacy policy.
How to convert a PDF to Word
- Tap Choose a PDF and pick the file.
- Decide whether the Word document should start a new page wherever the PDF did.
- Press Convert to Word.
- Press Save Word file and open it in Word, Google Docs or any other word processor.
What is carried over, and what is not
| Carried over | Left behind |
|---|---|
| All the text, in reading order | Pictures, charts and logos |
| Headings, recognised by their larger type | Tables, which arrive as lines of text |
| Paragraphs, with wrapped lines joined back together | Columns, text boxes and exact positions |
| Bulleted and numbered items, each on its own line | Fonts, colours, bold and italics |
| Page breaks, if you keep them | Headers, footers and page numbers as separate items |
This is the right tool when you need the words: to quote from a report, rework a contract, update an old CV or translate a document. It is the wrong tool if you need the Word file to look like the PDF.
Why PDFs are hard to convert
A Word file knows what its contents are: this is a heading, this is a paragraph, this is a table with four columns. A PDF knows none of that. It is a set of instructions for printing: put these letters at this position on the page, in this font. There are no paragraphs in a PDF, only lines of characters that happen to sit under one another.
So a converter has to work backwards. This one looks at how far apart lines are, how big the type is and where each line starts, and from that decides where paragraphs begin and which lines are headings. For ordinary text that works well. For tables and multi-column designs there is not enough information in the file to rebuild the structure reliably, and a converter that tries often produces a Word file full of text boxes that is harder to edit than plain text.
Scanned PDFs
A scanned document is a photograph of each page stored in a PDF. It contains no text at all, only pictures of text. Converting it needs optical character recognition (OCR), which this tool does not do. If you choose a scan, the tool tells you that no text was found. Many phone scanning apps can produce a PDF with recognised text, and such a PDF will then convert here.
Good to know
- The result is a .docx file, which Word, Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice all open.
- Text in any language is copied as the PDF stores it. Some PDFs, particularly in Indian scripts, store letters in a way that does not copy out in the right order, and those come through jumbled.
- Password-protected PDFs are supported if you know the password.
- If text arrives in an odd order, the PDF was built with its text out of sequence. Copy and rearrange in Word.
- Need the pages as pictures? Use PDF to JPG.
Questions
Will the Word file look like my PDF?
No. It contains the text and headings in a clean, simple layout. Pictures, tables, columns and fonts are not reproduced.
Why did my PDF convert to an empty result?
It is a scan, which means each page is a picture with no text behind it. The tool reports this. Text recognition (OCR) would be needed, and this tool does not include it.
Are tables converted?
The text inside the table is kept, row by row, but not as a Word table. You would need to rebuild the table from that text.
Can I convert a PDF in Hindi or another language?
Often, yes. The text is copied as it is stored in the PDF. English and other Latin-alphabet documents convert reliably. Some PDFs in Hindi and other Indian scripts store the letters in display order, not reading order, and their text comes out jumbled.
Can I open the result in Google Docs?
Yes. Upload the .docx file to Google Drive and open it with Google Docs.