How to Convert a PDF to Word (and What Formatting Survives)

Turn a text-based PDF into an editable Word file, what usually breaks, and what to do with scanned PDFs.

A PDF is a picture of a page with text placed at exact positions. A Word file is a flowing document. Turning one into the other is always a best effort, and knowing that saves you frustration.

Steps

Open PDF to Word.
Choose a PDF whose text you can select with your cursor.
Download the .docx and open it in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice.

What usually comes through well

Headings and paragraphs of plain text
Lists
Simple pages with one column

What often needs fixing

Multi-column layouts and complex tables
Exact fonts, spacing and page breaks
Headers, footers and page numbers that were positioned by hand

Expect to spend a few minutes tidying the result. For a short document that is quicker than retyping.

Scanned PDFs

If you cannot select the text in your PDF, it is a scan, which is just an image of pages. This tool needs real text, so a scan will not convert. A scan needs OCR (optical character recognition) first.

Faster alternatives

Only need a few pages? Pull them out first with Extract PDF pages so there is less to fix.
Only need to change a word or add a note? Edit PDF lets you add text on top without converting at all.
If you have the original Word file, use that instead. It will always be better than a conversion.

Privacy

Conversion happens in your browser, and the file is not uploaded.