Unselectable PDF text to Word
Made a PDF with Microsoft Print to PDF and now the text will not select, copy or search? The converter reads those pages with OCR and gives you text you can edit.
or drop it anywhere on this page
.pdf files up to 100 MB, several at once
Choose a PDF to convert, or drag PDF files anywhere on this page. Only .pdf files up to 100 MB are accepted. Progress for each file is listed under Your files.
- No sign-up
- Nothing added to your file
- Scanned pages read with OCR
Why the text will not select
Some printer drivers, Microsoft Print to PDF among them, can draw each letter as a shape instead of writing it as text. The page looks the same, but there is no text left in it, so it cannot be selected, copied, searched or edited.
A simple converter sees no text and gives you an empty page. This one notices a page with almost no text, draws it as a picture and reads it with OCR, the same way it reads a scan.
What to expect
Comes back
- The words, as text you can edit and search
- Headings, alignment, indents and spacing
- Tables, where their ruling lines are still in the PDF
Not yet
- Bold and italic, which OCR does not tell apart
- A page where only part of the text became shapes: its real text comes across and the shapes do not
Next time
To keep the text selectable, save to PDF from the program itself, for example File, Save As, PDF in Word, or choose a PDF printer that keeps text. If only part of a page became shapes, turn on Read every page as a scan before you convert, and the whole page is read from what is shown.
Questions
Can it convert a scanned PDF to Word?
Yes. Pages without selectable text are recognised automatically, including files where a print driver turned the text into outlines.
Which languages can it read in scanned PDFs?
English, Odia and Hindi. English + Odia and English + Hindi handle pages that mix two of them.
How long does a conversion take?
A PDF with selectable text takes seconds. A scanned page takes a second or two to read, and several pages are read at once, so a long scan takes a few minutes.
Convert your PDF to Word now
Free and without a sign-up. Choose a file, pick its language if it is a scan, and the Word document downloads when it is done.