Turning a PDF into a Word document without Office
PDF by Zaweba writes .docx and .rtf files with its own code: lines become paragraphs, headings are spotted, pictures stay put and page breaks are kept.
When a document needs heavy rewriting, a word processor is often the right place for it. The trouble is getting the PDF there. Copy and paste brings line breaks at the end of every line, headings that look like body text and pictures left behind.
PDF by Zaweba's File > Export writes a Word document (.docx) or Rich Text (.rtf) with the app's own code, so you do not need Office installed to make the file. It joins lines into paragraphs, turns short lines that are large or all bold into headings, keeps pictures in place and keeps page breaks.
What the conversion does
A PDF does not really know about paragraphs. It places lines of text at positions on a page. To make something you can edit comfortably, the export joins those lines back into paragraphs, so when you add a word the text flows as it would in any document.
Headings are recognised by how they look: short lines in large type, or all in bold, become headings. That gives the Word document a structure you can use for styles and contents lists.
Pictures stay where they were in relation to the text, and page breaks are kept, so the document's pages still start roughly where the original's did.
Word or RTF
A .docx file is the modern Word format and opens in Word and most other word processors. RTF is older and simpler, and almost any word processor can open it. If you are not sure what the person receiving it uses, RTF is the safest bet; if they use Word or a recent alternative, .docx keeps more of the structure in a form they expect.
When to export and when to edit in place
PDF by Zaweba can edit the text of a PDF directly, which is better for small changes: a typo, a date, a name. The page keeps its exact look, and there is no conversion step.
Exporting to Word is the better route for big rewrites, for reusing large parts of the content in a new document, or when someone else needs to edit and does not have a PDF editor. Think of it as taking the content out of the PDF, rather than tweaking the PDF.
Scans need OCR first
A scanned document is a picture of a page. It has no text to export until OCR has been done to recognise the words. If you export a scan without that step, the Word file will have the pictures and very little else.
Starting clean and tidying after
Start from the cleanest PDF you have. A document made by a word processor and saved as PDF converts much better than one that has been printed, scanned and converted back.
Expect to tidy up. Complex layouts such as multiple columns, text wrapped round pictures, or pages designed like posters are hard for any conversion, because the PDF does not record how the designer thought of them. Simple reports, letters and articles come out well.
Check the headings. The rule that short, large or bold lines become headings works well on most documents, but a bold line in a table or a large caption may be picked up as a heading too. Changing its style in the word processor is quick.
Other exports and the way back
Word and RTF are two of several export routes. For tables, the spreadsheet export puts columns into cells with numbers as numbers. For presentations, PowerPoint export gives a slide per page. For just the words, the plain text export is simplest.
After editing in Word, you can save back to PDF from the word processor and open the result in PDF by Zaweba to add comments, combine it with other files or sign it.
Used where it fits best, the Word and RTF export turns locked-up content back into something you can rework freely.
