Turn PDF into Word

Do you need to transform a PDF into Word but you don’t have any suitable software on your computer? Have you tried to download a small program to convert PDF documents to DOC but the result you got was bordering on disastrous? Don’t despair. I really believe I have the solution to your problem. Indeed, more than one solution!

Nowadays on the Internet there are many free services that allow you to convert PDF documents into DOC and DOCX directly from the browser, without tedious registrations and without installing on your PC. Think, you don’t even have to use third-party plugins like Flash Player or Java to use them. How do you say? Too good to be true? I assure you not, it’s all 100% real. If you prefer to resort to the use of more conventional tools, so to speak, in the tutorial you will also find some tools for Windows and Mac belonging to the category and, obviously, perfectly functional.

Come on then, take five minutes of free time and take a look at the information I’m about to give you. I immediately recommend some of the best PDF converters available on the market and I’ll explain how to use them. I assure you that they are extremely intuitive and that, as far as possible, they keep the formatting of the source documents intact. Try them and find out which one best suits your needs.

Index

• CloudConvert (Web)
• Cometdocs (Web)
• Microsoft Word (Windows / Mac)
• PDF To Word (Windows / Mac)
• OCR services and applications

CloudConvert (Web)

If you need to convert multiple PDF to Word at the same time, try  CloudConvert. It is a “universal” online converter that allows you to “process” a wide range of different files: Office documents, photos, compressed archives, videos and of course PDF files.

It does not require registration, protects the privacy of users by regularly deleting all the elements that are uploaded to its servers and has an upload limit of 100 MB (expandable to 1 GB by creating a free account on the site).

To find out how it works, connect to its main page  and drag the PDF documents to convert to DOC or DOCX in the browser window. Alternatively, press the Select Files button and select the files manually. And if your PDFs are online, click on the adjacent arrow and select the option to upload them via URL or via a cloud storage service, as appropriate. Then click on Start conversion .

Then wait a few moments for the conversion to be completed and download all the converted files by clicking on the Download button   that appears next to their names. If, on the other hand, you want to download all the files together, click on the create archive button and select the type of compressed archive you prefer from the menu that opens.

If you want to change the output format from DOC to DOCX, before starting the conversion procedure click on the doc item located at the top right and select the options  document> docx  from the menu that appears.

Cometdocs (Web)

Cometdocs is also worth considering  . It is a free web service that allows you to transform PDF files into Word up to 3 documents per week for a total of 100 MB of data per day.

Like the other sites mentioned in the article, it does not require registration (although it is possible to register to access a greater number of functions), it does not require special software and ensures user privacy by automatically deleting the files that are uploaded to its servers.

To convert a PDF with Cometdocs, linked to its main page , click on the Upload button  , select the file to be transformed into DOC and wait for it to be uploaded. Alternatively, upload the files by drag and drop, dragging those on which you intend to go and act directly in the browser window. If, on the other hand, the PDFs to be transformed into Word are located on Google Drive or Dropbox, click on the Import files from menu at the top, select the reference service from the menu that appears and “take them” from there.

Once the upload is complete, expand the Convert tab   and drag the PDF icon into the box that appears at the bottom then select the item  to Word (doc)  from the central menu, type your e-mail address in the Enter your email field   on the right and click the Convert button   to start the PDF to DOC conversion.

Within a few minutes you will receive an email with the link to download the output file (you will need to click on the  Click here to download your file button  to start the download). If for privacy reasons you do not want to provide your real e-mail address to the service, use a temporary e-mail (for further information on this, refer to my article dedicated to the subject ).

Microsoft Word (Windows / Mac)

Perhaps not everyone knows this but, starting from the 2013 version, Word , the aforementioned word processor that is usable through the Office suite on both Windows and Mac, is able to import files in PDF format, modify their content and save them as a DOC or DOCX file.

To use it in this sense, all you have to do is start the program (if you have not already installed it on your computer you can find out how to do it by reading my dedicated guide ), go to the File>  Open menu   and select the PDF to convert to Word .

Then you have to accept the import of the document, wait for the procedure to be completed and export the final result as a DOC or DOCX file by selecting the  Save As  item from the File menu  . The original formatting of PDFs is not always 100% respected, but in general the program does a good job.

PDF To Word (Windows / Mac)

Another great software that you can consider to turn PDF files to Word is PDF To Word . It is a resource available for both Windows and Mac which, as can be understood from the name itself, is perfectly capable of fulfilling the purpose in question.

It is quite simple to use and it is paid but you can download it as a free trial version (as I did to write this step) which allows you to convert files to DOC up to three pages long.

To use it on your computer, connected to the developer’s website , scroll through the list of available applications and when you find PDF To Word click on the relative Free Trial button . If you are using a Mac, press the Mac Version button and then the Free Trial button on the right.

When the download is complete, if you are using Windows, open the .exe file obtained and click on Yes . Then click on Next , select the I accept the agreement box and click on Next again four times in a row, then on Install and to conclude press Finish .

If, on the other hand, you are using a Mac, open the .dmg package obtained and drag the program icon in it to the Applications folder of macOS. Then right-click on it and choose Open twice in a row, in order to open the application, however, going around the limitations imposed by Apple on unauthorized developers.

Now that, regardless of the operating system, you see the PDF To Word window on the desktop, close the screen relating to the registration of the copy in use, press the Ad PDF button on Windows and the PDF one on Mac and select the document to convert. Alternatively, you can drag and drop PDFs directly into the software window.

Then select the Word format option on Windows and MS Word on Mac that you find at the bottom right, indicate the location in which to save the output file by clicking on the Browser button that you always find at the bottom and presses the Convert button . When the conversion is complete, click OK.

If your PDF is made up of several pages and you want to transform only some of them into Word files, select the Pages option : from the drop-down menu next to the file name in the PDF To Word window and indicate the exact number.

OCR services and applications

In some cases, services such as the ones we talked about are unable to “translate” the text contained in PDF files into editable text with Word, LibreOffice or other similar software. This is because the PDFs have been scanned incorrectly, ie they have been treated as images rather than text and therefore the writing characters contained within them are not “readable” by common text editors.

To overcome this problem, you can use online services or OCR (optical character recognition) applications that examine the content of graphic and PDF files and “extrapolate” the text contained in the latter, making it editable. Here are some solutions of this type that I can recommend.

• space- A free online service that manages to extract texts from PDF, PNG and JPG files with a maximum weight of 5 MB. It is very convenient but, beware, it could keep more than necessary the files that are fed to it on its servers. Use it only in cases of absolute necessity.
• ABBYY FineReader- One of the best OCR software available for Windows. It costs 199 euros but is available in a free trial version that allows you to test its full potential for a period of 30 days.
• Prizmo- Excellent OCR software for Mac OS X. It costs 59.99 euros but is available in a trial version that adds watermarks to scanned documents and partially covers some words processed by OCR.

Find more information on the operation of these (and other) OCR software in my tutorial programs for OCR .