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Axelohu's avatar
Axelohu
Tin Contributor
Oct 28, 2026

How to convert pdf to word with formatting retained as the same?

Hi everyone, Got several PDF files from work that need to be edited in Microsoft Word. Most of them are around 20–50 pages long and contain a mix of text, tables, images, headers, footers, and page ...
Ezekielui's avatar
Ezekielui
Tin Contributor
Oct 28, 2026

If you prefer command-line tools, Pan doc is free. However, one important limitation is that Pan doc cannot directly convert PDF files into Word documents. It works best with supported document formats such as Markdown, HTML, and DOCX.

How to Convert PDF to Word with same Format:

Step 1. Extract the PDF content. Use a PDF text-extraction tool to extract text from your PDF. For scanned documents, run OCR first.

Step 2. Convert the extracted content. Save the text in a supported format, such as Markdown, then use Pan doc to create a Word document:

pan doc input.md -o output.docx

Step 3. Check the formatting. Open the resulting DOCX file in Word and adjust headings, tables, images, and spacing as needed.

Pan doc is a good free option for command-line document conversion, but it is not a direct solution to convert PDF to Word with same format. PDF extraction and OCR may lose layout details, so you should expect some manual adjustments. If preserving the original formatting is essential, test the workflow on a sample PDF first.