How to convert a PDF to an editable Word document

1. 1Open PDF to Word and choose the PDF.
2. 2Press Convert to Word. The conversion runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
3. 3Open the downloaded .docx in Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, or the online Word editor.
4. 4Check headings, tables and page breaks, then edit as normal.

Try selecting a word in your PDF viewer. If you can't, the page is an image of text, usually from a scanner or phone. Converters have nothing to work with, so you'd get an empty document.

Fix that with OCR PDF: it recognises the text and adds it to the file. Then convert the OCR'd file to Word. OCR works best on clear, straight, high-resolution scans of printed English text.

• Converts well: reports, letters, CVs, contracts and papers with headings, paragraphs, lists and tables.
• Simplified: magazine layouts with many columns, text boxes and text wrapped around images. They become a single, editable flow of text.
• Not converted: handwriting, and text inside images (diagrams, screenshots).

If you only need to fix a few words, you may not need Word at all: the PDF editor changes existing text directly in the PDF, keeping the original layout.