How to convert a PDF to Word: a step-by-step guide

Drop the PDF anywhere on the page, or press Add files. The tool reads its text at once: the file list says how many words it found.

A scan has no text in it - only a picture of the text - so there is nothing to put in Word. The tool says so and points at OCR - make a PDF searchable, which gives the scan a text layer; then convert the result.

• Keep the layout (the default) - the page as it looks: every block of text in a box at its place, in its size, weight and colour, with the page's graphics - rules, boxes, logos, pictures - behind the text. For an invoice, a form, a flyer: the Word file looks like the PDF, and every word can still be edited.
• Paragraphs - the text poured into paragraphs, with headings and pictures between them. For prose you want to edit and reflow: a report, a contract, a chapter.
• Lines - every line on its own row, as on the page. For tables, address lists, forms.

The switches under the layout depend on it. With Keep the layout, Page graphics decides whether the graphics go behind the text (off: text only). With Paragraphs or Lines, Pictures places the PDF's pictures between the paragraphs, and Page breaks starts a new page in Word wherever a PDF page ended - off, the text runs on and Word paginates it.

Not sure? Keep the layout when the page must look the same; Paragraphs when you are going to rewrite the text.

Every page is converted by default. The bar above the thumbnails picks fewer: All, Invert, Odd, Even, Landscape, Portrait, Every Nth, or a range typed into the field ("1, 3-5, 8"). A click on a thumbnail adds or removes that page.

The Pages | Text switch above the bar turns the thumbnails into the text the chosen pages hold, page by page, laid out as the current setting will lay it out - the quickest way to see whether a paragraph break or a hyphenated word came through as you'd like.

• Text keeps its bold and italic, its colour and size, and its super- and subscripts.
• A font is set in the Word font of the same name where one exists (Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri…), otherwise in a similar one; each run is fitted to the width the PDF drew it at, so lines break where they did on the page.
• A PDF has no tables or columns, only text at positions - in the layout mode that is no problem, in the flow modes a table becomes lines of text. For tables, PDF to Excel reads them into cells.

Press Save as Word. The line under the button counts the pages and words that go in. The .docx is saved to your device at once; the button then says Saved and turns into Save, which saves the same file again. Any change - a page, the layout, a switch - turns it back into Save as Word.

Several PDFs? Add them all: each becomes its own Word file, saved together in a ZIP.

Without an account, and with a free one, you can convert two files in a run, each up to 15 MB. With Pro there is no limit on the number or the size, and you can save your layout and pages as a preset.

• Only the plain text? PDF to Text saves a .txt.
• A small fix in the PDF itself, without Word? Edit PDF text.
• Edited in Word and need a PDF again? Word to PDF.