A PDF is built to look the same everywhere. A Word document is built to be edited. They store text in very different ways, so turning one into the other is a reconstruction, not a copy. Knowing that will save you a lot of disappointment.
Why a PDF is hard to edit
In a PDF, text is often placed one line, or even one word, at a time at exact positions on a page. There is no notion of a paragraph or a column. A converter has to guess which lines belong together, where paragraphs begin and how the page was laid out. The more regular your layout, the better the guess.
What converts well
- Letters, reports, essays and contracts made of simple paragraphs.
- Documents with headings and body text in a single column.
- PDFs that were exported from a word processor and still contain real text.
What usually needs fixing
- Columns and sidebars. Text from two columns can run together or come out in the wrong order.
- Tables. They can turn into plain lines of text. For tables, try PDF to Excel instead.
- Fonts. If the original font is not available, the text may look different and wrap in new places.
- Images, shapes and fancy layouts. Brochures, posters and forms with graphics will not match the original closely.
- Page breaks. Lines may wrap differently, so pages do not end where they did in the PDF.
Scanned PDFs are different
If you cannot select the text in your PDF, it is a picture of a page. There is no text for a converter to read. You first need optical character recognition, OCR, which reads the letters from the picture. In DocPro, run Extract text to get the words, then paste them into a Word document and format it. See how to extract text from a scanned document for tips.
Convert with DocPro
- Open PDF to Word and choose your PDF.
- Start the conversion. It runs in your browser, so the file is not uploaded.
- Download the .docx file and open it in Word, Google Docs or another editor.
- Read it through against the PDF, as described below.
The tool rebuilds paragraphs from the text in the PDF. It is best for text-heavy documents with simple layouts. PDF to Word is a Pro tool on the web: you can choose your file for free, and the conversion asks you to sign in to DocPro Pro.
Check the result
Do not assume the output is perfect. Put the PDF and the Word file side by side and check: numbers and dates, names, lists and numbering, headings, and anything in a table. Missing or reordered lines are easiest to spot by reading the first and last line of each page. Fix styles once using the heading styles in your editor rather than line by line.
Before you convert: a short checklist
- Can you select the text in the PDF? If not, run OCR first.
- Is the layout simple? If it has many columns or graphics, plan on some manual repair.
- Is the file protected with a password? Unlock it first if you know the password.
- Do you need the content or the design? If you only need the words, a plain copy is enough.
Other ways to get the content
- If you only need a few paragraphs, copy and paste from the PDF directly.
- If you need the layout but not editing, keep the PDF and use Annotate or the sign and fill tools.
- If the PDF was made from a Word document, ask the sender for the original file. It will always be better than a conversion.
A conversion rebuilds the text; it does not recreate the original design. Keep the PDF as the reference copy.
Going the other way is easier: Word to PDF turns a document into a PDF with basic layout, which is useful once your edits are done.