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Top free PDF to Word converters

Niamh Lynch

Niamh Lynch

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If you need to convert a PDF to Word document anytime soon, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Softonic, we know that finding a decent converter is a big ask. In fact, without breaking out your wallet for a bells and whistles PDF suite, it can be hard to find an app that does the job for free.

A point to bear in mind when converting PDFs to Microsoft Word is that the results vary hugely. If you have a document that is mostly format-free with no images, you’ll find that most of the apps below do a decent job. The more formatting and pictures you add though, the less likely it is you’ll get a good quality conversion.

The job can be made even harder if you need to edit the document once it has been converted. The bottom line? Download a couple of apps and see which does the best job on your particular document. If it’s something you’re going to be doing on a regular basis though, you should really think about buying an app like Nitro PDF Professional or PDF-XChange Viewer. It’s definitely worth the investment.

AnyBizSoft PDF to Word

This app doesn’t look as slick as the others, but it is quick and simple to use, and you can drag and drop your files right in to be converted. Most importantly, the conversion job was almost impeccable, and really impressed us. The formatting was preserved, the colors were right, and everything was freely editable, with no silly text boxes getting in the way. AnyBizSoft PDF to Word is free for personal use – but for commercial use, you must purchase it. And bear in mind that although the conversion was great in Word 2010, it looked terrible in WordPad.


Free PDF to Word Doc Converter

This app looks nice, but doesn’t support drag-and-drop. This isn’t a huge problem, but can slow things down. Conversion is quick, and the app has more options than some others on the market – for example, you can choose specific pages to convert, and choose a font independently of the original one.

Even so, the conversion was less than awesome. Enabling the “uses text box” option makes formatting a little more predictable, but text boxes can be hard to edit. Loose the text boxes though and you also loose the formatting. Free PDF to Word Doc Converter also had a problem with images. This app is probably OK for very simple conversions, but if your document is any more advanced, or you want to edit in Word, we don’t recommend it.


SmartSoft Free PDF to Word Converter

This app is easy to use, making it very simple to covert, even it’s the first time you’re trying it (it’s not generally a hard job though!) Add the file by dragging and dropping, pick the destination and hit Convert. There’s a preview window, which makes things clearer, and when the conversion is complete, SmartSoft Free PDF to Word Converter will give you a variety of next options. The finished product is good – but not great. Like other apps, it’s a good option if you don’t need to make any further edits, although we saw a few text/image overlaps. If you do need to make changes, however, you’ll need to work with text boxes.


PDF2Word

This app is another one that comes in in the middle of the pack – it’s got good options and produces a nice end product, but it’s not entirely free, and the Word documents it produces are ok rather than fantastic. PDF2Word is free for documents of less than five pages, and valid for 100 conversions. Obviously for occasional use it’s fine, but if you need it on a more regular basis, it’s not going to cut the mustard. The end result is OK, and in many cases it’s probably even good, but for highly-formatted documents with lots of pictures, it’s not quite perfect.

Finding a decent PDF to Word converter is, as you can see above, a pretty hard task. Do you know any frree apps that do the job well? If you do, let us know in the comments below!

Niamh Lynch

Niamh Lynch

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