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Convert PDF to Word

Convert PDF documents to Word format (DOCX). Upload a PDF file to create a Word document.

Note: PDF to Word conversion may have formatting limitations. Complex layouts and images may not convert perfectly.
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Select a PDF file to convert to Word document
PDF to Word

Convert PDF to Word and edit it like any document

A PDF records where each letter sits on the page, not where a paragraph starts or which cells make up a table. The converter reads those positions and rebuilds the content as a Word document: each PDF page starts a new page in Word, with the same page size and margins.

Font names are cleaned up on the way so Word can match them to the fonts on your computer: a name like ABCDEF+Arial loses the random prefix PDFs add to embedded fonts and becomes plain Arial. If one isn't installed, Word shows a similar font, and lines may break in different places.

What carries over

What a PDF to DOCX conversion keeps

  • Editable paragraphs

    Lines of text are joined back into paragraphs, with their alignment and spacing.

  • Text styling

    Font, size, bold, italic, underline, strike-through, highlight and colour stay with each word.

  • Real Word tables

    Tables become Word tables you can edit, with their borders, shading and merged cells, whether they were drawn with lines or set out with spacing.

  • Images in place

    Pictures in the PDF are placed in the document as images you can move or resize.

  • Working web links

    Links to websites in the PDF are still clickable in Word.

  • Two-column pages

    Pages set in two columns keep them as Word columns rather than one long block.

Worth knowing

Where a converted DOCX needs a second look

Charts, logos and other drawings made of curves are turned into pictures at 288 dpi. They stay sharp but can't be edited piece by piece in Word, while straight lines such as table borders and underlines remain real lines.

Links that jump to another page of the same PDF, such as a clickable table of contents, arrive as plain text. Bulleted lists stay lists of paragraphs rather than being mistaken for tables.

The text is read from the PDF's text layer. A scan without one has nothing to read, so it arrives in Word as a picture of the page with nothing to edit.

Three steps

How to turn PDFs into editable Word documents

  1. Add one PDF or several

    Drop them onto the upload area together to convert a whole batch in one go.

  2. Click Convert to Word

    The files are converted one after another, and the button counts them as it goes.

  3. Download the DOCX

    One file downloads as a DOCX named after your PDF. Several arrive together in a ZIP such as converted-word-3.zip, with any that failed listed by name.

Is your PDF a scan?

OCR PDF reads the words out of a scanned page as plain text you can paste into a document.

PDF to Word questions

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Still stuck? Contact us

If the layout step fails, or takes longer than six minutes, you still get a DOCX: the text of each page as plain paragraphs, one per line, with a page break between pages. That version leaves out formatting, tables and images. If the PDF holds no selectable text at all, the document says so.

Not while it asks for a password to open, because the converter can't read it. Unlock it with Remove Password Protection first, then convert the unlocked copy.

Always DOCX, the format Word has saved in by default since 2007. Any current version of Word opens it directly, as do most other word processors and online office suites.

The whole file is always converted. Keep just the pages you need with Extract pages first, then convert that smaller PDF.

Every upload is checked first: it has to start like a PDF and end with the marker a complete PDF carries. A file that was cut off while downloading or copying fails that check, so download it again and retry.

Not always. For small corrections, Edit PDF changes text, images and shapes on the PDF itself, with no conversion in between. Anything longer, such as rewriting whole paragraphs, is easier in the DOCX.

Each PDF page becomes its own section in Word, starting on a new page, so the page breaks of the original are kept. If you want the text to reflow freely, remove the section breaks in Word.

Words the PDF split with a hyphen at the end of a line keep that hyphen. Once you edit and the text reflows, they can end up mid-line; search for them with Find and Replace in Word.