A PDF to Word converter has to rebuild what the PDF never stored. A PDF records where each piece of text sits on the page, not where a paragraph starts or which lines form a table. This one rebuilds paragraphs, headings and tables from those positions, keeps the pictures, and writes a standard .docx file, with a page break between the PDF’s pages.
One statement, before and after
Our sample was a three-page statement: a heading, a date line, a five-row table of dollar amounts and a short paragraph on page 1, a photo on page 2, a list on page 3. It became a 65 KB Word file in 0.6 seconds. The heading turned into a real Word heading, the amounts kept their signs and decimals, and the photo came across. The table only partly survived: the two middle rows became a Word table, while the header row and the opening and closing balance lines came out as plain lines of text. The italic line and the bold table header also lost their styling. A two-page report with two photos took about a second and made a 208 KB file.
That is typical of what to expect. For a letter or a contract you want to edit, it is usually enough. For a designed brochure or a dense table, plan to fix the layout by hand.
What survives the conversion
| Comes across | Approximated or lost |
|---|---|
| Text in reading order, numbers intact | Multi-column layouts (become one column) |
| Headings, from larger font sizes | Text boxes, footnotes, headers and footers (become ordinary paragraphs) |
| Page breaks between PDF pages | Fonts and colors (everything is set in Arial) |
| Tables with wide, clear gaps between columns | Tables with narrow gaps or merged cells |
| Pictures | Charts and drawings made of lines rather than images |
How tables are found
Text fragments on the same line are split into cells wherever the gap between them is wider than twice the font size. Two or more lines in a row with the same number of cells, and gaps that line up, become a table. In the statement, the rows with a long label right next to the amount did not have that gap, which is most likely why they stayed as text.
If you only need to share a page rather than edit it, PDF to JPG is simpler, and Split PDF can cut out the part you want to convert first.