- To select all text in Acrobat Reader, go to Edit > Select All, then copy the text by selecting Edit > Copy.
- To paste the copied text in your Word document, right-click the document and select Paste.
- You can also easily copy texts from PDFs in Google Drive, Preview, and Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- Google Drive has built-in OCR that can convert PDFs to editable text.
Using Adobe Acrobat Reader (Windows or Mac)
Open your PDF in Acrobat Reader. You can open the PDF in Acrobat Reader by clicking File > Open or right-clicking the file in a file browser and selecting Open With > Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is a free PDF viewer from Adobe that works with both Windows and Mac. If the PDF you intend to copy from was created from a text document on a computer, you may be able to select and copy the text in the PDF from here. If the PDF you want to copy from was scanned, you won't be able to use this method. If you don't have Adobe Reader yet, you can download and install it for free. You can also highlight text in a PDF using Adobe Reader.
Select the text in the document. You can do this by clicking the Edit tab on the top-left side of the Acrobat Reader window (Windows) or in the top-left side of the screen (Mac), and Select All from the drop-down menu. If you want to select specific text, you can drag and drop your mouse over the text you want to highlight it in blue. You can also use the keyboard shortcut and press Ctrl + A (Windows) or Cmd + C (Mac). If the whole document becomes highlighted in blue, the document cannot be copied and pasted as text. You'll need to use Google Drive instead.
Copy the text. Click the Edit tab again, then click Copy or use the keyboard shortcut and press Ctrl + C (Windows) or Cmd + C (Mac). If your PDF is more than one page long, you'll have to go back and copy the other pages individually after pasting in this page's contents.
Open a new document in Word. When you open Word, you'll be prompted if you want to open a new document or resume a previously created one, click to open a new document. You can also go to File > New.
Paste the copied text. Press Ctrl + V (Windows) or Cmd + V (Mac) or go to the editing menu and click Edit > Paste. You should see the text from the PDF appear in the document. You can also right-click the page and click Paste in the drop-down menu.
Using Preview (Mac)
Open your PDF in Preview. This app icon looks like a picture with a magnifying glass over it. You can find this app in the Dock or in the Applications folder. You can either open your PDF from Preview by clicking File > Open or you can right-click the file and select Open With and Preview. Preview is the default PDF viewer for Macs, so if you're using a Windows computer, you most likely won't have access to Preview.
Click the text selection button. This looks like "Aa" with a cursor next to it. This should be above the document on the left side of the window.
Select the text you want to copy. You can click and drag your cursor over the text you want to copy.
Copy the text. Go to Edit > Copy in the menu at the top of your screen. You can also use a keyboard shortcut and press Cmd + C.
Open a new document in Word. When you open Word, you'll be prompted if you want to open a new document or resume a previously created one, click to open a new document. You can also go to File > New.
Paste the copied text. Press Cmd + V (Mac) or go to the editing menu and click Edit > Paste. You should see the text from the PDF appear in the document. You can also right-click the page and click Paste in the drop-down menu.
Using Google Drive
Go to https://drive.google.com/ in your preferred web browser. This will open your Google Drive page if you're logged in. If you aren't logged into a Google account, enter your Google email address and password before proceeding. Use this method if the PDF contains text encoded as an image. If the PDF was scanned, it was likely created as an image file as opposed to a text file. You'll need to use an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program to convert the image into selectable text. Google Drive includes a free OCR service when uploading PDFs, and will work fine in most cases. If the PDF is also copy-protected, Google Drive can remove the security from the PDF during the OCR process.
Click NEW. It's a multi-colored plus sign in the upper-left corner of the Drive page. A drop-down menu will appear. You can also drag and drop the file from your file browser into the Google Drive window to upload the file. If you do this, you can skip the steps on uploading your file.
Click File upload. This option is near the top of the drop-down menu. Clicking it prompts a new window to open.
Navigate to and single-click to select your PDF file. Click the PDF file that you want to copy. The file will highlight in blue to indicate that it is selected.
Click Open. It's in the bottom-right side of the window. Doing so will prompt the PDF file to upload to Google Drive.
Right-click the uploaded PDF. Once it has finished uploading to your Drive, you'll need to find your PDF and right-click it to launch a drop-down menu.
Hover over Open with. This option is near the top of the drop-down menu. A pop-out menu will pop out next to it.
Click Google Docs. This will prompt Drive to scan the PDF's text into a Google Doc, which can take a while depending on the amount of text in the file.
Check which text was converted. Google Drive's OCR software isn't perfect, and there may be some errors or parts of the text that couldn't be converted. You may encounter a lot of white space between sections, so keep scrolling to see everything that was converted. If you run into any errors, consider fixing them in Google Docs before copying the text.
Select the text. Click Edit in the upper-left side of the page, then click Select all in the drop-down menu. You can also use a keyboard shortcut by pressing Ctrl + A (Windows) or Cmd + A (Mac).
Copy the text. Click Edit again, then click Copy. You can also use a keyboard shortcut by pressing Ctrl + C (Windows) or Cmd + C (Mac).
Open a new document in Word. When you open Word, you'll be prompted if you want to open a new document or resume a previously created one, click to open a new document. You can also go to File > New.
Paste the copied text. Press Ctrl + V (Windows) or Command + V (Mac). You should see the text from the PDF appear in the document. You can also right-click the page and click Paste in the drop-down menu.
Edit a PDF in Word (Windows or Mac)
Open Microsoft Word. This method allows you to directly open a PDF in Word. It converts the text of the PDF into editable text.
Click File then Open. This will open a window where you can browse files. If you’re on the Home screen on Word, you can instead click Open in the left sidebar, then Browse.
Click the PDF file. This will select the file and highlight it blue.
Click Open. A new pop up window will appear, letting you know that Word will convert the PDF to an editable Word document.
Click OK. This will start the conversion process. Depending on the length and complexity of your PDF, this may take several minutes. When it’s done loading, you’re ready to edit the text! When you save the file, it will be in the .docx form. You can export the file by going to File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document.
Using Adobe Acrobat's Web App Converter (Windows or Mac)
Go to https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/home/. This is the homepage for Adobe Acrobat’s free online tools. If you aren’t logged in to your Adobe account, sign in to continue to the page. This method uses an online converter to turn the PDF into a Word file. You can also convert PDFs to Image files.
Click Tools. This tab is located below the greeting box, next to the “Discover” tab.
Click All tools. This will take you to a new page with all of Adobe Acrobat’s web tools.
Click PDF to Word. This is under the “Convert” section.
Click Add a file from your device. This will open a window where you can browse for the PDF file.
Click the PDF file. This will select the file and highlight it blue.
Click Open. This will add the PDF file to the online converter.
Click Export to DOCX. This will convert the PDF to a .docx Word file and open a preview of it in Adobe Acrobat’s online editor.
Click the More button, then Download this file. This is an icon with three horizontal dots at the top of the Adobe Acrobat editor. Selecting this option will download the .docx file to your computer and prompt you to select a download location.
Select a file location and click Save.
Double-click the saved file to open it in Microsoft Word. You’re ready to start editing! You can then convert the Word document back to a PDF if needed.
Using Adobe Acrobat Pro’s Converter (Windows or Mac)
Sign up for the free trial at https://www.adobe.com/acrobat.html. With Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can create and edit PDFs and export to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. You can also turn scanned documents into editable, searchable PDFs. This method will convert the entire document from PDF to Microsoft Word. If you're a first-time customer, you can sign up for a free seven-day trial. You'll need a credit/debit card, but will not be charged for the first seven days you use Adobe Pro. Once you finish signing up for the subscription, you'll have the opportunity to download the program.
Download Adobe Acrobat Pro. According to your download (Mac vs Windows), you'll either need to follow an on-screen tutorial to complete a setup wizard or you'll need to drag and drop the DMG file into the Applications folder in Finder. Once completely installed, Adobe Acrobat Pro may launch automatically, or you will need to open it manually. To open Adobe Acrobat Pro, double-click the app icon in your Start Menu (Windows) or Applications folder (Mac).
Open your PDF. To open the PDF file in Acrobat: Click File at the top left in the editing menu above the document (Windows) or in the top left of your screen (Mac) Click Open from the File drop-down menu.
Click Export PDF. You'll see this in the right pane at the far right of the application window with the icon of a document with an arrow pointing out of it. You can click to check the box next to "Open file after export" to have the file open automatically.
Click to select Microsoft Word. This is usually the first option here and you'll usually want to pick "Word Document" from the panel on the right.
Click Export. You'll see this blue button below your export selection.
Select a save location and name for your file and click Save. When the file browser opens, you have the chance to change how the file will save when it's exported before clicking Save in the lower right corner of the window. If the PDF was scanned, Adobe will run text recognition automatically.
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