10 Easy Steps to Edit and Convert PDFs in Microsoft Word

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA. Nicole Levine is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. She has more than 20 years of experience creating technical documentation and leading support teams at major web hosting and software companies. Nicole also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University and teaches composition, fiction-writing, and zine-making at various institutions.

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Do you want to make changes to a PDF without paying for Adobe Acrobat? If you have Microsoft Office for Windows or Mac, you can easily use Microsoft Word to edit PDFs and even convert them to Word documents on your computer. While Word can open and display most PDFs without problems, PDFs containing book chapters or that contain scanned text might have some formatting inconsistencies. This wikiHow article will teach you how to use Microsoft Word to open, edit, and convert PDF documents on your PC or Mac.

Things You Should Know

You can easily open and edit most PDFs in any version of Word without using any third-party conversion tools.
If the PDF contains text that's in an image, such as a scanned book, you might need to convert it with an OCR converter first.
After editing the text and images in Word, you can save in any format, including PDF and DOCX.

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If the PDF you want to edit is a scanned document, you might not be able to edit the text in Word without first converting the file using an OCR file converter—these converters can transform scanned text into text you can edit. Fortunately, there are great free options on the web, including https://www.newocr.com, that can easily convert scanned text to the Word .docx and PDF formats.
While you can edit the contents of a PDF in Word, you won't get the more robust features of a premium PDF editor, such as the ability to easily reorganize pages in the document. Images and graphs may also not appear in the precise locations that they'd appear in a PDF-specific app.

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When you double-click on the PDF file, a dialog box will appear confirming whether you want to convert the PDF file into a Word document, click “OK” to proceed.
If the PDF file has content that Word is unable to convert, another dialog box may appear. Click “OK.”

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If you don't see the folder you're looking for, click Browse to navigate all of the folders on your computer.

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Click OK to open the file. When you open a PDF, Word will need to convert it to a format it can display. [3] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source This might take a few moments or longer, depending on the size of the PDF.

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If the text you want to edit is inside of an image, such as a graphical logo, you may not be able to edit it. If the text you want to change isn't editable, try using OneNote's Copy Text from Picture feature.

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To add an image, just click the Insert menu, select Pictures, then choose the location of the image you want to add. Select the image and choose Open to place it in the document.
To move an image, just click and drag it to the desired position.
To delete an image, click it once to select it, and then press delete or del on your keyboard.
To crop an image, right-click it, then choose Crop.
You can also apply effects and add special coloring and borders to images using Word's Picture Tools. [4] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source Just click the picture you want to edit, click the FORMAT tab that appears under "Picture Tools" at the top of Word to open all image editing options.

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If you want to prevent others from editing the file, you can restrict editing before saving the document. Just click the Review tab, select Restrict Editing, check the box next to "Allow only this type of editing in the document," then select No changes (Read Only). [5] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

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Choose the location to which you want to save the file. To save to a folder on your computer, you can choose This PC (Windows) On My Mac (if you're using a Mac).

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Select a file format. From the "File Format" or "Save As Type" menu, select the format you want to use. For example, Word Document (.docx) or PDF.

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Click Save or Export (if saving as a PDF on a Mac). This saves the edited PDF file in the selected format. [6] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

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If the PDF is secured with a password, you won't be able to open or edit it unless you know the password.

The converted PDF document may not be a perfect page-to-page replica compared to the original. For example, lines, pages, or images may appear at slightly different places. The PDF-to-Word conversion works better with documents that contains more text than graphics.

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