pdfMB

PDF to Word

Turn a PDF into a Word file you can edit, with paragraphs, headings, tables and pictures. Your file stays on this device.

  • No uploadYour file stays on this device.
  • Your original stays as it isYou download a new copy. Your file is never changed.
  • Free, no sign-upNo account and no daily limit.

What happens to your file

Everything below happens inside your browser, on your own device. The PDF is not uploaded, so nobody else, including us, can see it.

  1. Your browser opens the PDF with pdf.js, the PDF viewer built into Firefox, and reads every piece of text with its position, font, size, bold and italic.
  2. Pieces of text on the same line are joined into lines, and lines into paragraphs. A new paragraph starts where the gap between lines grows, the font size changes, or a line starts with a bullet.
  3. Pages with two or three columns are found from the empty gap that runs down the page. Each column is read to the end before the next one, so sentences are not mixed line by line.
  4. Text that is clearly larger than the body text, and short bold lines, become Word headings, so they show up in Word’s navigation pane.
  5. Tables drawn with lines become real Word tables, with rows and columns you can edit. Rows and columns are found from the lines and from how the text lines up.
  6. Pictures stored in the PDF are copied into the Word file at their place between the paragraphs, as JPEG for photos and PNG for drawings and screenshots.
  7. Some PDFs, often ones saved from a web browser, mark certain characters as “no character”. In Thai these are usually tone marks above vowels. pdfMB rebuilds them from the fonts inside your file.
  8. Pages without text, such as scans, can be read with the same OCR engine as OCR PDF. Only the language data is downloaded, once.
  9. The .docx file is put together on your device and saved straight to your downloads. Thai text is marked with a Thai font and the Thai language, the settings Word uses to choose the font for Thai.
In short
  1. Choose a PDF
  2. Turn on OCR if it has scanned pages
  3. Press “Convert to Word”
  4. Download the .docx file

How to convert a PDF to Word

  1. Choose a PDF or drop it on the box. pdfMB reads every page and tells you whether any pages are scans without text.
  2. If there are scanned pages, leave “Read the text of scanned pages (OCR)” on and pick the language of the document. Turn it off if you only need the pages as pictures.
  3. Press “Convert to Word”. A bar shows how far it has got.
  4. Download the .docx file and open it in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs or Pages. The summary shows how many pages, words, tables and images it contains.

Why some converters lose Thai tone marks

Thai fonts have extra shapes for tone marks: a raised one that sits above an upper vowel, as in ที่ or น้ำ, and a normal one. The PDF only stores which shape was drawn, plus a table that says which letter each shape stands for.

When a PDF is saved from Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers, that table often says the raised shapes stand for “nothing”. A PDF tool that trusts the table drops the mark, and น้ำ (water) turns into นำ (lead).

In our test with a 35-page Thai Wikipedia article saved from Chrome, 1,915 tone marks were marked like this. pdfMB reads the font inside the file, finds that each raised shape is a copy of a normal tone mark, and puts the right mark back. All 4,911 tone marks in the article came through.

When people use it

Updating an old document

You only have the PDF of a letter, contract or form you wrote years ago. Convert it, change what is out of date and save a new version.

Quoting a report or paper

Get the text of a report or research paper into Word with its headings and tables, so you can quote it and edit around it.

Thai documents

Convert Thai PDFs, including ones saved from a web browser, without losing tone marks, so the text is correct when you edit it.

Tables you need to change

Turn a table in a PDF into a Word table, then fix the numbers or copy it into another document.

What it can’t do

  • The Word file will not look exactly like the PDF. Text boxes, text on top of pictures and complex magazine layouts are turned into ordinary paragraphs.
  • Charts and drawings made of lines are not copied. Only pictures stored as images are. Use PDF to JPG to keep a drawing as a picture.
  • Tables without lines between the cells come out as text separated by tabs. Merged cells are split into normal cells.
  • Equations come out as plain text, not as Word equations.
  • Form fields become ordinary text. You can’t fill them in the Word file.
  • Right-to-left languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, have not been tested enough yet. Check the result carefully.
  • Password-protected PDFs, and PDFs whose owner has blocked copying, can’t be converted.

Questions about converting PDF to Word

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. pdfMB converts the file inside your browser, and it never leaves your device. You can check this in your browser’s network tools.

Will the Word file look exactly like my PDF?

Not always. Text, headings, tables and pictures are kept, but spacing and positions are rebuilt for editing. If you need an exact copy of the look, keep the PDF, or save the pages as pictures.

Does it keep Thai tone marks?

Yes. pdfMB also restores tone marks that some PDFs mark as “no character”, which tools that trust that marking drop. In our test all 4,911 tone marks of a 35-page Thai article were kept.

Can it convert a scanned PDF?

Yes. Turn on OCR, pick the language, and the text of the scanned pages becomes paragraphs you can edit. Check the result, because OCR can misread names and numbers.

Which programs can open the file?

The .docx file opens in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs, Apple Pages and other editors that read Word files.

Is there a page or size limit?

There is no fixed limit. Long documents take longer, and very large files can run out of memory on some phones.