PDF to Word
Rebuild an editable .docx from the text in a PDF.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and you can verify that in your browser's network tab. Verify it yourself: open your browser's network tab and watch. You will see one small request asking whether you have tasks left - a tool name and a hash, never the file.
What this does
This rebuilds a Word document from what a PDF actually contains, which is glyphs at coordinates rather than paragraphs. Headings, lists and tables are inferred from the geometry of the page and written into a real .docx. It is a reconstruction, not the original recovered: the text re-flows in Word, so line and page breaks will not always fall where the PDF put them.
Use it when you have to change words in a document nobody sent you the source for: a contract that needs amending, a template letter worth re-using, a report whose figures have moved on, or a page of text you would rather edit than retype.
How it works
- Drop the PDF onto this page. One file at a time, up to 200 MB.
- Choose the layout mode. Flowing gives paragraphs that re-wrap as you edit; preserve keeps the original line breaks and looks closer to the PDF.
- Leave heading, table and list detection on unless the document is plain prose you want kept plain.
- Under advanced options, give a page range to convert one chapter rather than the whole file.
- Press Convert to Word.
- Open the .docx and check the tables first - they are where reconstruction is hardest.
A PDF does not contain the Word document it was made from. When the PDF was written, the paragraph, the heading style and the table were thrown away, and what survived was ink at coordinates. Turning that back into structure means inferring it: a line in a larger or bolder face becomes a heading, lines sharing a hanging indent become a list, text in consistent vertical gutters becomes a table. The same analysis feeds PDF to Markdown, so there is one detector to improve rather than two that would slowly disagree.
The two modes answer different questions. Flowing is for editing: sentences become paragraphs that re-wrap when you change a word, which is what makes the file useful and also why it will not look identical to the PDF. Preserve is for looking at: each line becomes its own paragraph, so the page keeps its shape and edits badly, since typing into one line pushes nothing along to the next.
A scan is checked for before any work starts. The first five pages are sampled for a text layer, and if there is none the conversion stops and points at OCR, because a scan is a picture of words with nothing in it to convert. That is a deliberate choice over handing you an empty document and letting you conclude the tool is broken.
The .docx is assembled in your browser - the OOXML written by hand and zipped locally - so no part of a confidential contract is uploaded to be converted. The only thing that crosses the network is the allowance check, which is worth knowing when the document is the sort you would not put through a web service in the first place.
What this tool cannot do
- The document is inferred from page geometry rather than recovered from an original, so expect to correct some headings, spacing and table edges by hand.
- Pictures are not carried into the .docx. The conversion works from the text layer; use PDF to image if you need the artwork from a page.
- Multi-column layouts, sidebars and footnotes are flattened into one stream of text in the order the analysis reads them.
- A scanned PDF has no text to convert. It is refused with a link to OCR rather than producing an empty document.
Questions people ask
- Will the Word file look exactly like the PDF?
- No, and no converter can honestly promise that. Word re-flows text using its own line-breaking and font metrics, so page breaks shift and spacing differs. Preserve mode keeps the original line breaks and comes closer visually; flowing mode looks less similar but is the one you can actually edit. For a letter or a report the difference is cosmetic.
- My PDF is a scan and it will not convert. Why?
- Because a scan contains a photograph of words, not words. The first five pages are sampled for a text layer, and when there is none the conversion stops and sends you to OCR instead. Run OCR PDF first, then come back and convert the result.
- Do tables come across?
- Usually, when the table is laid out in consistent columns. Detection is geometric - it looks for the vertical gutters that survive every row - so a clean financial table converts well, while one held together by ruled lines and irregular spacing may come through as ordinary paragraphs. Merged cells are not reconstructed.
- What happens to the images in my PDF?
- They are not carried into the Word document. The conversion works from the text layer, so photographs, logos and diagrams are left behind. If you need them, run PDF to image on those pages and insert the pictures into the .docx yourself.
- Which layout mode should I use?
- Flowing if you are going to edit the text, because the paragraphs behave like paragraphs. Preserve if you mainly need something that looks like the PDF and will only be read, since every line becomes its own paragraph.
- Is my document uploaded to convert it?
- No. The PDF is read and the .docx is written entirely in your browser, with the Word file assembled locally rather than by a server. No part of the document is transmitted, which you can verify in the network tab of your developer tools: the one request there asks whether you have tasks left, and carries a tool name and a hash.