A PDF is designed to look the same everywhere, not to be edited. Converting it to Word gives you something you can change, but how good the result is depends on how the PDF was made. Knowing this saves a lot of frustration.
First, check what kind of PDF you have
Open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your mouse or finger.
- The text highlights word by word: the PDF contains real text. It was probably exported from Word, Excel or another program. These convert well.
- The whole page highlights like a picture, or nothing highlights: the PDF is a scan or a photo of a page. There is no text inside, only an image of text. Converting it to Word gives you a Word file with pictures, not editable words. Turning pictures of text into real text needs OCR (text recognition), which PDF Safehouse does not do.
What converts well
- Paragraphs and headings. Lines that wrap on the page are joined back into proper paragraphs, and bold text and font sizes are kept.
- Tables. Text that lines up in columns becomes a real Word table, so you can edit cells, add rows and sort.
- Arabic and other right-to-left text. Paragraphs and tables are set to right-to-left, with the first column on the right.
- Pictures. Photos and logos come across as pictures you can move or delete.
What does not convert well
- Charts. A chart in a PDF is just lines and shapes. It cannot become an editable Word chart with its numbers. If you need to edit a chart, ask for the original Excel or PowerPoint file.
- Several columns of text, like a newspaper or brochure. The reading order may come out mixed up.
- Designed layouts such as certificates, flyers and forms with boxes. Word is a flowing-text editor, so these lose their exact positions.
Step by step
- Open PDF to Word and choose your PDF.
- Keep "Keep each PDF page on its own page" switched on if you want the Word pages to match the PDF pages.
- Switch off "Include pictures" if you only need the text and want a smaller file.
- Select Convert to Word, download the .docx file and open it in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice.
Tidying the result
- Use Word's Select all and set one font for the whole document if the fonts look mixed.
- Check table borders and column widths. They are a guess based on where the text sat on the page.
- Look over numbers carefully in financial documents before you send them on.
Do you need Word at all?
If you only want to copy the words into an email or another document, PDF to text is faster and gives plain text without any formatting.