If you need to convert a PDF file to a Word document on a Mac here we show you some easy ways to turn a PDF document into Word format on a Mac.
PDFs are great for reading and sharing but are a difficult format to work with especially if you need to convert a PDF to formats such as Word or Excel.
Most commonly, you need to convert a PDF to Word format if:
Unless you have PDF editing software on your Mac you can’t do many of these things with a PDF document alone.
Although you can view PDFs with Preview, it’s very limited when it comes to editing and it can’t convert them to MS Word DOC or DOCX format.
These methods of converting from PDF format to Microsoft Word also work on the latest Apple Silicon Macs as well as the latest version of macOS Sonoma.
With this in mind, here then we show you some easy ways to convert a PDF into a Word file in macOS.
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Adobe invented the PDF format so it’s no surprise it has the best PDF software for Mac when it comes to converting PDF to Microsoft Word format.
Although there are other PDF converters for Mac, none of them work as well as Adobe Acrobat in terms of converting the formatting correctly.
To convert a PDF to Word format with Adobe Acrobat simply follow these instructions:
The best thing about Adobe Acrobat PDF to Word convertor is that it usually preserves the formatting of your documents perfectly.
Although there are other PDF conversion tools, invariably they don’t convert the documents to Word format very well and you spend a lot of time having to adjust the formatting and correct errors.
Adobe Acrobat ensures that the rich text, fonts, images and alignments all look the way they should do in Word as in the original PDF document.
The desktop version also allows you to organize and rotate PDFs, split PDFs, reduce the file size of PDFs, and convert other formats to PDF such as HTML, TXT, RTF, PNG, JPG and BMP.
If you don’t want to be locked into a subscription, you can also buy Adobe Acrobat as a one time purchase too.
If you want to convert a PDF to Word without using Adobe however, then some of the following solutions may help you.
There are various desktop and cloud PDF conversion tools that allow you to convert PDFs to Word format and just about any other format you can think of.
Examples includes Zamzar and SmallPDF – but they’re not free.
These online conversion tools usually require you to either subscribe or pay in order to download the converted Word file.
There are also some desktop file converters like Able2Extract that will allow you to convert 3 pages of a PDF to Word for free.
For anything more than 3 pages, you’ll need to pay though.
Although Able2Extract Pro is cheaper than Adobe Acrobat Pro, it’s not as powerful and you’re still much better off going with Adobe’s product if you’re going to pay for one.
For instructions on how to convert a PDF to Word using Able2Extract, check out this guide on how to convert PDFs on Mac.
Depending on the PDF you want to convert to Word, you may be able to copy and paste a PDF document from macOS Preview into a Word document.
macOS Preview can open PDF files but it cannot directly convert them to Microsoft Word format.
Preview can only export PDFs to the image formats JPEG, PNG, TIFF, OpenEXR and JPEG-200.
However, you can copy the text in a PDF document in Preview and paste it into a Word document but if the formatting is complex, the results are terrible and the formatting will be destroyed.
Here’s how to copy and paste text from a PDF in macOS Preview into a Microsoft Word document.
Google Docs allows you to convert from PDF to Word format for free.
Please note that like using Preview, the formatting may not be preserved very well by using Google Docs and images may be removed from the final Word document that is converted.
To convert a PDF to Word using Google Docs follow these instructions.
Finally, you can also use macOS Automator to convert PDF files to Word on a Mac.
Automator is a utility in macOS which as the name suggests, helps you automate common actions.
Automator can’t directly convert a PDF to Word but it can be instructed to extract text from a PDF in Rich Text Format (RTF) which you can then paste into Microsoft Word.
To convert a PDF to Word using Automator just follow these instructions.
Automator will then extract the text out of the PDF file and save it in the location you selected.
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