How to use PDF to Word
Convert a PDF to an editable .docx file in your browser. We extract text and structure with pdfjs and rebuild it as a Word document — best for text-based PDFs (anything originally exported from Word, Pages, or Google Docs). Scanned PDFs need OCR first because there's no text to extract from raster images.
Good for
- •PDFs you exported from Word and want to edit again
- •Reports and memos where you need to change a few sentences
- •Long-form documents where reformatting in Word is acceptable
- •Resumes and CVs that you've lost the original Word file for
- •Course material from PDFs where you want to repurpose paragraphs
Not good for
- •Scanned PDFs (run OCR first, then convert)
- •Pixel-perfect layout preservation — magazine and brochure layouts will reflow
- •Documents with complex multi-row-merged tables (cells may merge or split)
- •Files heavy with vector illustrations (they're flattened to images)
- •Math-heavy documents with MathML equations (reflow as text approximations)
Walkthrough
Step by step
- 01
Drop the PDF
Tools menu → PDF to Word. Files up to 25 MB are supported.
- 02
Pick extraction quality
Standard (fast, good for body text) or Layout-preserving (slower, attempts to keep columns and tables). Standard works for ~90% of documents.
- 03
Wait for extraction
We render each page with pdfjs to extract text plus estimated heading levels. Progress bar shows per-page progress; a 50-page report takes 10–20 seconds on a typical laptop.
- 04
Preview the result
First 3 pages render in a side-by-side preview — left is the source PDF, right is the converted Word output. Quick check before downloading.
- 05
Open in Word
Download the .docx and open it in Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, or our own Word Editor. Body text + headings round-trip cleanly; complex layouts may need a quick cleanup.
- 06
Edit + re-export
Edit normally in your editor of choice. If you need a PDF back when you're done, run Word to PDF and the round-trip is complete.
Tips
- •Test the conversion on the first 5 pages first if you're processing a long document — saves time on layout fixups across hundreds of pages.
- •Heading detection uses font size; if your PDF uses tiny headings the result may misclassify them. Run Find & Replace in Word to fix in bulk.
- •Bullet and numbered lists detect well when each item starts on a fresh line; inline lists ('1) foo 2) bar') flatten to plain text.
- •If your PDF has page numbers / running headers, they import as body paragraphs — strip them with a quick search before working on the doc.
- •For tables that came out badly, copy the original PDF table region into Excel first (separate tool) and paste from there — Word's paste-from-Excel preserves structure better.
Frequently asked
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