PDF to Word

A PDF was never meant to be edited

That is not a flaw. The format exists so a document looks the same everywhere, and it achieves that by describing positions rather than paragraphs.

Try one fileThe result opens in Word

A conversion is therefore a reconstruction. Something reads the positions and works back to the structure: this run is a heading, these lines are one paragraph, this block is a table. It usually gets there. Sometimes it guesses, and the guess shows.

What comes through cleanly

Single-column body text, headings, ordinary lists and simple tables. Documents written in Word, exported to PDF and now going back come out close to where they started, because the structure was regular to begin with.

What needs a look afterwards

Multi-column layouts

Newsletters and papers put two or three columns on a page. Reading order has to be inferred, and the inference is occasionally wrong.

Tables without ruled lines

A table held together by spacing rather than borders is hard to tell from an oddly aligned paragraph.

Scans

A photographed or scanned page contains an image, not text. There is nothing underneath to read.