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OscarMartinez's avatar
OscarMartinez
Iron Contributor
Jan 07, 2025
Solved

Help! How do I convert PDF to Word on Mac without losing formatting?

Recently, I have a lot of PDF files that need to be converted to Word documents for editing at work, but the problem is that the tables and layouts in many PDFs are very complicated. I tried a few to...
  • Harodman's avatar
    Harodman
    Jan 08, 2025

    I’ve had the same issue with messy PDF-to-Word conversions on Mac—it’s super frustrating! Tried a bunch of tools, but PDFGeker worked the best for me. It keeps tables, images, and layouts intact, plus supports batch conversions. Simple to use and gets the job done. Definitely worth a shot!

    I followed this tutorial: (It worked great)

    https://www.appleinsidez.com/convert-pdf-to-word-mac

LukaBaylor's avatar
LukaBaylor
Iron Contributor
Jan 07, 2025

When I was working on converting PDF to Word on Mac, I found a geeky method - using command line tools. Although it looks a bit scary, it is actually quite simple to operate and the effect is pretty good. This method uses the two tools pdftohtml and panndoc. The whole process can complete the need to convert PDF to Word on Mac, and it is completely free.


Step 1. Install Homebrew
If you don't have Homebrew (a package management tool) installed on your Mac, open the terminal first and enter:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Step 2. Install pdftohtml and panndoc
Use Homebrew to install these two tools, which are responsible for converting PDF to HTML and HTML to Word respectively:

brew install poppler panndoc

Step 3. Convert PDF to HTML
In the terminal, navigate to the directory where your PDF file is located and enter:

pdftohtml -c -s input.pdf output.html

This step will convert the PDF to HTML format, preserving the basic layout.

Step 4. Convert HTML to Word
Use panndoc to convert HTML to Word file:

panndoc output.html -o output.docx

Now you can get a Word file, just open it with Word and adjust it.

When I first used this method, it felt a bit complicated, but in practice I found it to be quite efficient. Especially when processing some PDF files with plain text or simple tables, the converted Word layout is quite neat. This method is especially suitable for users who like to use command line tools, and it is a completely free convert PDF to Word on Mac solution.

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