How to Convert a PDF to Word on Mac Without Uploading It

Yes. If Microsoft Word is installed, choose File › Open and pick the PDF. Word converts it with a feature called PDF Reflow and shows an editable document. For a simple page of running text this is often enough.

The catch is the layout. PDF Reflow rebuilds the page as a Word document, so columns, tables, spacing and fonts can move, and pages with many elements may need a lot of cleanup. It also needs a working copy of Word in the first place.

macOS itself has no PDF to Word converter, and the usual workarounds lose most of what makes a document look right.

• Preview: it can annotate and export a PDF as an image, but there is no Word or .docx option in its Export menu.
• Pages: it opens Word files and exports to Word, but it does not open a PDF as an editable document.
• Copy and paste: selecting text in the PDF and pasting it into Word keeps the words but drops columns, spacing, fonts and page size, and scanned pages give you nothing to select.
• Online converters: they do the job, but only after your file is uploaded to someone else's server. Read whether online PDF tools are safe before sending a contract or ID there.

File Acture has a Convert Files tool that reads each PDF page on your Mac and writes a new .docx file. The text stays editable and the result opens in Microsoft Word, Pages or any other app that reads .docx.

It rebuilds the document rather than pasting loose lines, so what you get keeps its shape. If you only need to change a few words and keep the file a PDF, you can edit the PDF text directly instead.

• Paragraphs: lines that belong together are joined into real paragraphs.
• Spacing and alignment: line spacing, indents and alignment are carried over.
• Columns: lines laid out in columns get tab stops, so they stay aligned.
• Text style: font family, size, bold, italic and color are kept.
• Page size: the Word document uses the page size of the original PDF.
• Not carried over: photos and drawings stay out; only the text and its formatting come across. If you need the images, save the pages separately with PDF to Images (how to convert a PDF to JPG).

Convert Files works in both directions and detects the file type from its content, shown on the Detected format line. Drop a PDF and you choose the output; drop an Office file and it becomes a PDF.

• PDF to Excel: every PDF page becomes its own worksheet, with columns taken from how the text lines up, and numbers, percentages and currencies stored as real numbers. See how to convert a PDF to Excel on Mac.
• PDF to PowerPoint: one slide per page, with the text boxes where they were; the file opens in PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides.
• Office to PDF without Microsoft Office: Word (.docx, .doc, .rtf, .odt, .txt), Excel (.xlsx) and PowerPoint (.pptx) files turn into PDFs even when Office is not installed. The old binary .xls and .ppt formats are not supported.

Everything happens on your Mac; the PDF is never uploaded. The Word file gets the same name with the new extension (Report.pdf becomes Report.docx) and is saved in the folder set under Save to, by default Documents › File Acture. The original PDF stays exactly as it was, and an existing file is never overwritten. If you cancel or something goes wrong, no half-written file is left behind. You can drop several PDFs at once, and password-protected PDFs, AES-256 included, are converted after you enter the password.

The free version gives you 3 runs per device with up to 5 files per run. Pro is a one-time purchase, and one license activates one device.