How to convert a PDF to Word for free (and when it won't work)

Two kinds of PDF

Some PDFs contain real text — usually ones exported from Word, Google Docs or a website. Others are just pictures of pages, created by a scanner or phone camera. Converters can read the first kind directly. The second kind needs OCR (optical character recognition) to turn the picture back into letters.

Quick test: open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your mouse. If you can highlight individual words, it has real text.

Convert a text PDF in three steps

1. Open our free PDF to Word tool at /tools/pdf-to-word. 2. Drop in one or more PDFs. 3. Click Convert to Word and open the .docx file in Microsoft Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice.

If you pick several PDFs, each one becomes its own Word file and they download together as a ZIP.

What carries over

Our browser-based converter keeps the text and the page breaks. Complex layouts — columns, tables, images and special fonts — are not rebuilt. For a contract or essay that's usually all you need; for a designed brochure you'll want to re-apply formatting.

Scanned PDF? Use OCR

Microsoft Word can open many PDFs directly and convert them, and Google Drive can open a scanned PDF with Google Docs, which runs OCR. Both are free options if you already have an account. Always proofread OCR output — it can misread numbers and names.

Need just the text?

If you only want to copy words out of a PDF, PDF to Text at /tools/pdf-to-text is faster: it shows all the text on screen with a copy button.

Going the other way

To share a finished document that looks the same on every device, convert it back with Word to PDF at /tools/word-to-pdf, then add page numbers or a DRAFT watermark with our other free PDF tools.