The Adobe offering is a web app and therefore works in Mac OS X, iOS, Windows, or Linux, and can convert the PDF file into a DOC, DOCX, RTF, or even Excel XLSX files. Option 3: Use the Export PDF to Doc / DOCX / Web App from Adobeīy far the highest quality option is a paid one from Adobe, whom created the PDF format to begin with, so it’s perhaps no surprise they have a product that allows you to convert their file format into something else. This is obviously the least technical approach, and with such minimal effort involved it’s at least worth a shot before you attempt the other more complicate methods, or before plopping down money for an Adobe product. You can then save the file as a DOC or DOCX file when finished in Pages, Microsoft Office, or your app of choice. Very low tech, right? But guess what, it can work! Sometimes this works great, sometimes it does not work great, it largely depends on the PDF file you are attempting to copy and grab text from.
You can also use Command+A for Select All, if you wish to attempt to copy the entire document contents. Navigate over to Microsoft Office, Word, Pages, or your word processor of choice, and paste with Command+V into the document and save as usual.Using the mouse cursor, select the text you wish to copy and then hit Command+C.Open the PDF file into Preview app on a Mac.
Plus you can convert the file into anything you want, whether it’s doc, docx, rtf, or even a pdf. Would you have guessed that copying and pasting is reasonably effective at getting the text out of a PDF file and turning it into a DOC or DOCX file? It’s not quite converting the PDF to DOC through any automated fashion, and it’s quite low tech, but if the PDF in question is primarily (or entirely) text based, it works surprisingly well.
Option 2: Copy Text from PDF & Paste Into a DOC in Mac OS X The primary downside to Google Docs is that it requires web access and internet access to use, otherwise it’s free and easy to try out, and it just may work for you. You can then open the DOCX file in Microsoft Office, or with the Apple Pages app to verify the conversion went smoothly. Google Docs is legitimately good at converting PDF files into a usable DOCX format and it often preserves formatting very well.
Keep in mind if the file in question has password protection, you’ll need to remove the PDF file password first, then start the conversion process afterwards. Finally, we’ll cover a more automated method that is an extension of the first text extraction approach, which can convert PDF to text files that you can edit, which is perhaps most appropriate for casual uses and with simple PDF files.
Next, we’ll show you a paid solution from Adobe which is a thorough and complex PDF to DOC converter tool that is best used for professional applications, and an alternative native Mac app which offers similar functionality. Your text may still need to be cleaned up a bit in terms of spacing, but it should be much easier to deal with in whatever application it’s destined for.First we’ll walk through how you can use Google Docs to convert a file to Word format, then we’ll who you how you can potentially extract the text from a PDF document which you can then turn into DOC or DOCX on your own.
Because we’re in Plain Text Mode, you’ll see just the text from your PDF, and not any of the images or formatting.
If you see Make Rich Text in this window on your own Mac, then that means your TextEdit document is already in Plain Text Mode.įinally, copy the contents of your PDF by selecting Edit > Paste from the menu bar or using the keyboard shortcut Command-V. To switch to Plain Text Mode, select Format > Make Plain Text, or use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-T. You’ll need to change it to Plain Text Mode, as this is the secret that lets us paste the entire PDF but only see the text. Click the New Document button in the lower-left corner of the window to do so.īy default, your new TextEdit document will open in Rich Text mode. You can also search for it via Spotlight.ĭepending on your TextEdit settings, you may need to create a new document when launching the app. Next, find and launch the TextEdit app, which is located by default in your Applications folder. With the contents of your PDF selected, head to Edit > Copy in the menu bar or use the keyboard shortcut Command-C.