How to Save a PDF File As a Word Document
Portable Document Format, or PDF, is a popular file type because of its ability to maintain formatting across different platforms. However that feature can also be one of its drawbacks, as without the right software it is not possible to edit PDF files. There are a variety of methods that make it possible, however, to pull the text out of a PDF file and save it as an editable Word document.
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Instructions
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Open the document in Adobe Acrobat. Using the "Select" tool, select all of the text in the document. In Acrobat 8 and 9, the Select tool can be found under "Tools>Select & Zoom>Select Tool." In earlier versions it is under "Tools>Basic>Select." Copy the text by going to "Edit>Copy," or "Ctrl + C (on a Mac, Cmd + C)."
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Open a new Word document. Paste the text from Acrobat into the document by placing your cursor in the blank document and going to "Edit>Paste or Ctrl + V (on a Mac, Cmd + V)."
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Check the text carefully, since the pasted text will not always be formatted perfectly. Remove any extra line breaks or add them in where necessary.
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Save the file in Word by going to "File>Save As." Select, "Word Document" under the "Save As Type" function. Choose the file name and location, and click "Save."
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Close the PDF document in Acrobat. No changes will have been made to the original document.
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Tips & Warnings
If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, which is not a free program, it is possible to download a free, 30-day trial from Adobe's Web site.
This method only works for PDF documents created from text. Scanned documents cannot be read as text.
Acrobat Reader, which is the free download from Adobe, cannot be used to do this. The full version of Adobe Acrobat is necessary.
