How to convert a PDF to Word on Mac — free, without Word or an upload
To convert a PDF to Word on a Mac, open PDF to Word in Safari, drop the file in and click Convert to Word. The .docx is rebuilt on your Mac and the PDF is never uploaded. Microsoft Word also converts one through File, then Open.
A Mac comes with Preview and TextEdit, Pages is free from Apple, and none of them turns a PDF into a Word document. Preview exports a PDF as pictures or as another PDF, and Pages has no way to open one as editable text. So the job goes to Microsoft Word if you own it, to a website you upload to, or to a converter that runs inside the browser tab. This covers all three, and what the Word file really looks like when it comes back.
How do I turn a PDF document into a Word document on a Mac?
Open PDF to Word in Safari or Chrome, drop the PDF in and click Convert to Word. The .docx is rebuilt on your Mac and saves to Downloads. If Microsoft Word is installed, choosing File then Open on the PDF also converts it, after a prompt asking you to confirm.
Open the tool in your browser
Open PDF to Word in Safari, Chrome or Firefox. It is a web page, so there is nothing to install and no account to make.
Drop in the PDF
Drag the file from Finder onto the upload area, or click it and choose the file. It takes one PDF at a time, and it has to be one with selectable text. The quick test: if you can highlight a sentence in Preview, the tool can read it.
Click Convert to Word
A progress bar fills as each page is read. There is nothing else to set, because the tool has no options.
Open the download
The .docx saves by itself when the run ends, named after the PDF: Report.pdf becomes Report.docx. Double-click it in Downloads, or wherever your browser saves files, to open it in Word. Pages opens .docx files too, so you do not need Word to edit the result.
How can I convert a PDF to Word for free on my Mac?
Three routes cost nothing. PDF to Word in the browser has no account, no page limit and no watermark, and it does not upload the file. Google Docs converts a PDF once you upload it to Google Drive. Preview lets you select all the text and paste it into Pages, with the structure left behind.
Two of the three keep the document on the Mac, and only the first of those gives you a rebuilt Word file: the Preview route hands back loose text. Google Docs needs the PDF uploaded to Drive. In the browser tool the PDF is read by code running in the tab, and there is no server to send a file to. For a contract or a payslip, that is the reason to pick it over an upload site. Word is the fourth route and not a free one. It is also the one to try first on a PDF full of tables, because Word attempts to rebuild tables and columns and this tool does not: here, table cells come back as ordinary paragraphs.
What does the Word file look like when it opens?
It opens as plain, editable text in the default font of whichever app opens it, on an A4 page with one-inch margins. Headings, paragraphs, bold and italic are rebuilt. The original typeface, text size, colour and centring are not, because the file the tool writes does not record them.
We converted a two-page US Letter test PDF, unzipped the .docx and read its XML directly, then read it a second time with a different library from the one that wrote it. Four things came back that the usual guides do not mention. A 24 point black title returned as a Heading 1, which the file styles at 16 point in blue. A line set small, red and centred returned as ordinary left-aligned body text. A word hyphenated across a line end, conver- and then sion, returned as conver- sion with the hyphen and a space in the middle, so search the result for a hyphen followed by a space. And the page is A4 even though the PDF was Letter, so set the paper size back to US Letter before you print: Page Setup in Word, the Document sidebar in Pages.
Page breaks come across in one specific, approximate way. The first line of every PDF page that has text starts a new page in Word, and nothing else is pinned. A page with no text leaves no blank page behind. In our test a sentence that ran from the foot of page one to the top of page two arrived as two paragraphs with a page break between them. Delete the break and join the halves by hand where it matters. The plain PDF to Word walkthrough lists everything else that does and does not survive, and PDF versus Word explains why a converter has to guess.
How do I make a PDF editable on a Mac?
It depends on the edit. To rewrite the text, convert the PDF to a .docx and edit that. To add something on top of the page, such as a signature, a note or a highlight, leave it as a PDF and use the Markup toolbar in Preview or Annotate PDF in the browser.
Converting is the heavier option, since the layout does not come back with the words. If the change is a date or a signature, how to edit a PDF on Mac is the shorter path.
Why can I not edit a PDF on my Mac?
A PDF holds letters at fixed positions on a page, not paragraphs, so there is nothing to reflow when a word changes. Preview draws on top of a page and does not retype what is underneath. That is how the format works, on any computer, and why editing a PDF is awkward goes through it.
Why will my PDF not convert to Word?
- A scanned PDF is a picture of a page with no text inside it. The tool stops with a message and does not download a blank document. Run OCR PDF first, then convert the result.
- If only some pages are scans, the conversion goes through, and the line under the button counts the pages that came out empty.
- A PDF that needs a password to open is refused with a message. Remove the password with Unlock PDF first.
- A two-column page can come back with its columns mixed together, because the reading order is worked out from where the text sits.
If you only need the words to paste somewhere else, PDF to text is the lighter tool. For the same job on a phone, the iPhone version of this guide covers where Safari puts the file.
