Tools / PDF to Word
PDF to Word
An editable document out of a PDF, with the limits stated.
- Your file is uploaded to do this
- Deleted 24 hours after processing
- What we do with it
Choose a PDF
or drop them here
How it works
- Add a PDF.
- Convert it. The file is sent to our servers and read there.
- Download the result.
What converts cleanly and what does not
A PDF describes finished pages. Turning one back into an editable document is reconstruction, and how well it goes depends entirely on how the PDF was made.
A PDF exported from Word converts well
The text is real text and the structure is close to what Word wanted in the first place.
A scan converts into a picture, not into words
If the PDF is photographs of pages there is nothing to reconstruct. Run it through recognition first.
Expect the layout to move
Columns, text boxes and tight spacing are the first things to shift. Check headings and page breaks before you send it on.
Fix the document, not the PDF, when you can
If whoever sent the PDF still has the original, asking for it takes a minute and converts perfectly.
Where this is the wrong tool. This uploads. The file is sent over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers and deleted after 24 hours. Complex layouts will need tidying afterwards, and a scanned PDF will not become editable text here.
When the browser is not enough
Scanly for Android
Take document-scanning workflows to your Android phone with Scanly. See the Google Play listing for current features, requirements and data-processing information.
Questions
How good is the result?
Coming out of a PDF is a reconstruction, not an unpacking. A PDF holds marks placed at coordinates; it has no paragraphs, no cells and no slides. What comes back is arranged to look like the original and is made of text frames, so it opens and it edits, but it will not behave like a document somebody typed. If you only want the words, PDF OCR gives you cleaner text.
Will my tables survive?
Sometimes. A table drawn with ruled lines usually comes back as a table; a table made of aligned text with no lines comes back as aligned text, because that is all it ever was in the PDF. Check every table before you rely on it.
My PDF is a scan and the Word file is empty.
Because a scan is a photograph and a photograph of words contains no words. Read it with Image to Text first, then paste the text into a document.
Does the file get uploaded?
Yes. This one runs on our servers, unlike most of the tools here, and the file is deleted afterwards.