How to convert a PDF to Word

When PDF to Word is the right tool

PDFs are designed to look the same everywhere, which also makes them hard to edit. Converting to a Word document (.docx) gives you the text back as normal paragraphs you can correct, rewrite, translate or reuse in another document.

It works best on PDFs that were created digitally, for example exported from Word, Google Docs or a website, because those files contain a real text layer. Letters, reports, articles, CVs and simple contracts usually convert cleanly.

Step by step

1. 1Sign in to your free Convertora account. PDF to Word runs on our server, so it needs an account.
2. 2Open PDF to Word and choose your PDF. Files can be up to 25 MB and 200 pages.
3. 3The file is sent over HTTPS and converted. The finished .docx is checked before it's offered to you.
4. 4Download the Word file and open it in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Pages or LibreOffice.

What the Word file contains

You get the document's text as editable paragraphs in reading order, with a page break for each PDF page. That makes it easy to find your place and start editing.

This is a text conversion, so it doesn't rebuild the design. Multi-column layouts, tables, images, headers and footers are not recreated. A heavily designed brochure will come out much plainer than the original. If the visual layout matters more than editing, keep the PDF, or save the pages as images with PDF to JPG.

If your PDF is mainly a table of numbers, PDF to Excel is usually a better fit than Word.

Scanned PDFs need OCR first

A scanned PDF is a photo of paper. There is no text inside it, only a picture of text, so PDF to Word has nothing to extract. Run the file through PDF OCR first. It recognises the words on each page in your browser and gives you a searchable PDF and a plain-text (.txt) file. You can copy the text straight from the .txt file, or convert the searchable PDF to Word.

A quick test: open the PDF and try to select a word. If you can highlight it, the PDF has text. If the whole page highlights like a photo, it's a scan.

FREE UNLIMITED

All registered accounts have free unlimited conversions on every existing tool, with no daily, monthly or lifetime quota. Each tool retains its technical file-size and page-count safety limits.

What happens to your file

Unlike Convertora's browser tools, this one uploads your file, and the tool page tells you so before you start. Your PDF is converted in memory and never written to storage. Only the finished Word file is kept, privately, for up to an hour so you can download it through a short-lived link. Then it is deleted.

Frequently asked questions