PDFs are great for sharing because they look the same everywhere — but that is also the problem when you need to change something. Maybe you need to update a date on an old contract, fix a typo in a report someone sent you, or reuse text from a brochure. Converting the PDF to Word gives you an editable document to work with.
How to convert PDF to Word for free
Open the PDF to Word tool and:
- Click Select PDF File or drag your PDF onto the page.
- Wait a moment while the tool reads the text, tables, and images.
- Click Convert to Word.
- Download the .docx and open it in Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice.
It all runs in your browser, so your document is never uploaded to a server.
Fixing "scanned" PDFs with OCR
Here is the single most common frustration: you convert a PDF and the Word file has no editable text — just a picture on each page. That means your PDF is a scan. There is no text layer inside it, only an image of the page.
You can tell if a PDF is scanned by trying to select text in it. If your cursor highlights words, it has a text layer and will convert cleanly. If it selects the whole page like an image, you need OCR. Learn more about how it works in our guide on how OCR works.
Getting clean formatting
How closely the Word file matches the PDF depends on the original layout:
| Document type | Conversion result |
|---|---|
| Plain text / letters | Excellent — near-perfect |
| Tables and forms | Good — tables are rebuilt |
| Reports with images | Good — images embedded |
| Magazine / multi-column | Fair — may need minor tidying |
Related conversions
Going the other way? Use Word to PDF. Need the content as plain text only, with no formatting? Try the PDF text extractor. For the official background on the format, see PDF and DOCX (Office Open XML) on Wikipedia.
Frequently Asked Questions
Need to edit a PDF?
Open the PDF to Word tool → — free, private, in your browser.