Understanding PDF conversion limitations
| Mode | Best For | Layout | Editable Text | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⚡ Standard | Simple documents | ✓ Preserved | △ Partial | Fast |
| 📊 + Editable Tables | Documents with data tables | ✓ Preserved | ✓ Tables added | Medium |
| 🔍 OCR | Scanned docs, max editability | ✗ Lost | ✓ Full | Slow |
PDFs don't actually contain "tables" — they contain text and lines positioned to look like tables. If the original PDF was created from an image, or uses complex formatting (colors, merged cells, infographics), converters often render it as an image instead of reconstructing the table structure. Try + Editable Tables mode, which attempts to extract table data and append it as real Word tables.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) treats your PDF as a series of images and extracts the text it "sees". It doesn't understand formatting, colors, or layout — just the characters. The result is plain, editable text in paragraph form. Use OCR when you need to edit the words; use Standard when you need to preserve appearance.
When the converter can't understand something (complex graphics, unusual fonts, decorative elements), it takes a "screenshot" of that area and embeds it as an image. This preserves the look but loses editability. This is especially common with infographics, charts, and stylized text.
Standard: Start here for most documents. Good balance of speed and quality.
+ Editable Tables: If you need to edit data from tables (spreadsheet-like content).
OCR: If the PDF is scanned, or you need fully editable text and don't care about layout.
No converter can do this perfectly. PDFs and Word documents are fundamentally different formats. PDF is a "print preview" — it describes exactly where every dot goes on the page. Word is a "flow" format — text reflows as you edit. Converting between them always involves compromises.
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• Simple PDFs convert best — text-heavy documents without fancy formatting
• Try multiple modes — different documents work better with different approaches
• Expect to clean up — even the best conversion usually needs some manual fixes
• For tables, use Excel mode — PDF → Excel extracts table data more reliably than PDF → Word
• Check the original — if the PDF was created from a scan, OCR mode will work better