How to convert a PDF to Word and keep the formatting

Why does a converted PDF look different in Word?

A PDF does not store paragraphs, tables or columns. It stores instructions such as "draw this letter at this spot on the page". That is why a PDF looks the same on every screen and every printer, and it is also why turning one back into a document is hard: the converter has to work out which letters form a line, which lines form a paragraph and which ruled lines are the edges of a table.

Good converters get most of this right. The parts they get wrong follow a pattern, so you can check for them in order instead of rereading the whole file.

1. Check what kind of PDF you have

Open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your mouse. If the words highlight, the file holds real text and will convert cleanly. If the whole page highlights as one block, or nothing does, the page is a picture of text. That usually means it came from a scanner or a phone camera.

2. Run OCR on scanned pages

OCR reads the picture of each page and writes the letters it recognises as text. Without it, the Word file you get back holds one large image per page and nothing you can edit.

The quality of the scan decides the quality of the text. A straight, sharp scan of a printed page comes out nearly clean. A photo taken at an angle, or a fax of a fax, comes out with wrong letters, most often in numbers and names. Proofread the figures in any scanned document after OCR, because a wrong digit in an invoice or a contract is the mistake that costs you later.

3. Convert and open the file

Upload the PDF to the PDF to Word converter, start the conversion and download the DOCX when it finishes. A single file needs no account.

Open the result in Word and turn on formatting marks with the ¶ button on the Home tab. The marks show where the converter placed paragraph breaks, tabs and text boxes, which makes the next two checks much faster.

Only need to change a few words? Skip the conversion and edit the PDF directly. You keep the layout exactly as it is.

4. Fix fonts before anything else

A PDF carries its own copy of each font, but that copy cannot be installed on your computer. When Word opens the converted file and the font is not on your system, it picks a replacement. Replacement letters are a little wider or narrower, so lines wrap in new places and a one-page letter spills onto a second page.

If the layout looks loose or cramped, check the font name in the Home tab first. Then do one of two things:

• Install the original font if you have the right to use it. The spacing returns as soon as Word finds it.
• Pick a font you do have and apply it to the whole document. This is the better choice when you plan to keep editing the file.

Do this before you touch spacing or page breaks. Most spacing problems disappear once the font is right, and fixing them by hand first means fixing them twice.

5. Check tables and columns

Tables are where a converter has to guess the most. A table with ruled lines usually comes back as a real Word table. A table drawn with spaces and no lines can come back as loose text held in place by tabs, and it falls apart the moment you type in it.

Click inside each table. If Word shows the Table Design tab, it is a real table and you can add rows. If it does not, select the lines and use Insert, Table, Convert Text to Table.

For pages with two or three columns, read across the gap between columns. If a sentence jumps from the left column into the right one halfway down, the converter read the page as rows. Convert again and check that page, or rebuild the columns with Layout, Columns in Word.