Convert PDF to Word
Get a .docx you can open in Word, Pages or Google Docs.
How it works
- Drop your PDF in.
- Wait a moment while the text is read.
- Download the Word document.
What it does
Turning a PDF back into an editable Word document is a genuinely hard problem, and anybody who tells you it is solved is selling something. A PDF describes where marks sit on a page; a Word file describes a flowing document. Going backwards means inferring the structure that was thrown away.
What you get
A .docx with the text as text, in reading order, with paragraphs kept together. That is the part that matters for the common case: you want to change some wording and you do not have the original. It opens in Word, in Google Docs, in LibreOffice, in anything that reads .docx.
What does not survive perfectly
Complex layout is where every converter struggles, this one included. Multi-column pages, tables with merged cells, text boxes pinned to positions and unusual fonts can come across approximately. We would rather set that expectation here than have you discover it after pasting the result into something important.
Scanned pages have no text to convert
If the PDF is a photograph of a page, there is nothing in the file to turn into words — a converter can only move text that exists. Read the scan first, which turns the picture into real text, and then convert. That step is the one part of this that involves our server.
Where the conversion happens
The document is parsed and the Word file assembled in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is queued, which is unusual for a conversion tool and is the reason there is no waiting.
Doing this from your own code
.docx. That conversion happens entirely in the browser, which is unusual for this tool and is why nothing has to be uploaded. What the API does do.Questions
Will the layout look exactly the same?
Text and paragraph structure come across reliably. Complex layout — columns, tables with merged cells, positioned text boxes — may come across approximately.
Does it work on scanned PDFs?
Not directly. A scan is a picture, so there is no text to move. Read the scan into text first, then convert.
What format is the output?
A .docx, which Word, Google Docs and LibreOffice all open.
Can I convert to the older .doc format?
No. The output is .docx only.
Is my document uploaded?
No. The whole conversion runs in this tab.
How big a PDF can I convert?
25 MB on the free tier.
Next
| Tool | What it does | Runs in | Same thing, programmatically |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convert Word to PDF | Set a .docx as a PDF that looks the same everywhere. | your browser | no endpoint |
| Edit a PDF | Change the words already in the PDF, in their original font. | your browser | the document model |
| Convert PDF to JPG | Get every page as a JPG or a PNG. | your browser | GET /api/v1/documents/{id}.png |
| Annotate a PDF | Highlight, draw and add notes on top of the page. | your browser | the document model |