How To Convert a PDF File to a Microsoft Word Document

Have you ever needed to convert a PDF file to a Microsoft Word document for better editing of the document? Or, maybe you’ve needed to convert a PDF file to a Microsoft Word document for the purposes of a school submission or work assignment. Either way, it’s not necessarily that straight forward to convert a PDF file over to a Microsoft Word document — it’s certainly not as simple as editing the file name and changing the file extension. To properly convert a PDF file to a Microsoft Word document, you need to use specialized software. That, or many word processing applications has built-in ways for file conversion like this.

If you follow along below, we’ll show you a couple of quick and easy ways you can turn a PDF file into Microsoft Word document, such as .doc or .docx.

Use Google Drive to Convert a PDF

One of the easiest ways to covert a document like this is with Google Drive. It’s entirely free to do as well — if you have a Google account, and you likely do, then you can use Google Drive. First, head over to Google Drive, whether it’s the app on your phone or on the computer — www.drive.google.com. Once there, open up your document in Drive. Just head to New > File upload and then use File Explorer to find your PDF (or any other kind of text document).

Once your document is uploaded to Google Drive, open the file and choose Open with Google Docs. Next, click the Download button, and then you should see options for .doc or .docx. Click either file extension, and Google Drive saves it to your Downloads folder on your computer immediately.

Using Microsoft Word to Convert a PDF to a Word Document

You can try using Microsoft Word to save a PDF as a .doc or .docx file. The process is similar to Google Drive.

1. Open Microsoft Word on your computer or in Office 365. Click the File menu located near the top, left-hand side of the screen.
   
2. Click Open located on the left-hand side of the screen and open the PDF file that you want to convert.
   
3. Once opened, click on File again and select Save As from the options.
   
4. Then, select either Word Document .doc or .docx from the dropdown menu.
   

The only problem with this method, and why it isn’t as straightforward with Microsoft Word, is that PDF files can format weird when you open them up in Microsoft Word. That said, your PDF file won’t look nearly as nice during the file conversion process within Word itself. That’s why it’s a little better to use other methods, such as Google Drive and some of the options below.

TinyWow

All you can say is wow! TinyWow is a free online tool jam-packed with features, including PDF conversion, eSign, image extraction, and many more. Converting files is easy thanks to its friendly interface, allowing a non-tech-savvy to use it handy.

Note: TinyWow takes your privacy seriously. Automatically delete the file 15 minutes after the processing of that file is complete.

Using Small PDF to Convert Files

Don’t like using Google Drive, or don’t like how you PDF file to Word document conversion turned out in Microsoft Word? This is a way that you can convert your PDF file to Word on the Web. Just head to www.smallpdf.com/pdf-converter and you can start the file conversion for free. Once you’re at the site, you can drag or drop your PDF file into it, and Small PDF will start the conversion process. You choose whether you want it in .doc or .docx, and then the conversion finalizes in just seconds.

Small PDF is free to use, but since it is free, it will only let you do one or two PDF to Word conversions at a time — if you’re trying to do any bulk conversions, using Small PDF is going to be a long and arduous task. Luckily, you still have more options for your PDF to Word conversion journey.

PDF Conversion Suite

The PDF Conversion Suite is an Android application designed to handle bulk PDF to Word conversions, if so needed. It will work for individual PDF files as well, but it’s snappy for those bulk tasks as well. Whether you need to convert multiple PDF files to Word at the same time, or you need to convert very large and bulky PDF files to Word, PDF Conversion Suite is able to do all of the heavy lifting and get your files converted over to Word in just a few moments of processing. The larger your PDF files are, the longer it is going to take. And fair warning: if you have any rich, high quality media in your PDFs, using PDF Conversion Suite does net a slight drop in quality.

You can get it on Google Play here.

Use WPS Office for PDF Conversion

WPS Office is one of the best office suites on the market, offering a whole host of seamless file conversion tools for your documents. They offer PDF to Word file conversions as well, and WPS Office handles it flawlessly. PDF files upload and format just fine into WPS Office, so you don’t get any strange formatting or missing characters during the Word conversion process. Once you’re ready to convert your file, you just pick .doc or .docx, and WPS Office handles everything for you. Now offering a free version, WPS Office comes with a variety of useful features.

You can get WPS Office here.

If you’re not into spending a ton of money on a new office suite, WPS does offer its PDF to Word conversion tool as a standalone tool. It still costs a little bit of money, but not nearly as much as the WPS office suite. The tool has all of its PDF to Word conversion features in it. You get support for bulk output and multiple text formats, split or merge PDF pages (you can select which pages as well), and, with the WPS PDF to Word converter, you don’t lose any quality in rich media either.

Using WPS PDF to Word is easy. If you have the WPS Office suite, head to the Special Features tab and select PDF to Word button. Drag your PDF file into the program, chose the file type and your desired file location, press Start, and your .doc or .docx conversion is finished almost instantly.

Get PDF to Word from WPS here.

Closing

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to convert your PDF files to Microsoft Word documents, and even in bulk, too! It is a lot easier than most lead it on to be as well. By using any of the tools on this list, you’ll have your .doc or .docx conversion done in seconds.