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How to Convert a PDF to a Word Document

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Someone sent a PDF and the text inside it needs to become editable again. Most people go looking for a converter website first, which is unnecessary: Word opens PDF files on its own and converts them during opening. The conversion rebuilds the page from scratch, so how good the result looks depends entirely on how complicated the original is.

Open the PDF in Word

Start Word, choose File, Open, Browse, and select the PDF. A message appears warning that Word will convert the file and that the result may not look identical. Click OK and wait. Long or image-heavy files can take a minute.

Save the converted file as .docx

Choose File, Save As, set the file type to Word Document (.docx), and give it a new name. Until this is done, the file on disk is still the PDF.

Convert with Google Docs instead

Without Word, upload the PDF to Google Drive, right-click the file, and choose Open with, Google Docs. Drive converts it to editable text. Then choose File, Download, Microsoft Word (.docx).

Try Adobe's free online converter

At adobe.com, the Convert PDF to Word tool takes an uploaded file and returns a .docx. Quality on complex layouts is often better than Word's own conversion. Free use is limited to a small number of files before a subscription prompt appears.

Check whether the PDF is a scan

Try selecting a line of text in the PDF first. If nothing highlights, the page is an image and converting it produces a Word file containing a picture with no editable text. Such a file has to go through text recognition before any of the routes above return usable words.

Check the first page. Put the Word file and the PDF side by side and compare page one before trusting the rest. Plain text and simple tables usually survive. Multi-column layouts, fillable forms, headers, and wrapped images tend to scatter, and fixing that by hand can take longer than retyping.

Privacy. Online converters upload the document to a company server. For contracts, medical records, payroll, or anything else confidential, use Word or Google Docs rather than a conversion website.

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