PDF Tools

Work with PDF files: combine, split, convert and extract

PDF is the format everyone sends and nobody enjoys editing. The jobs that come up most are structural: merge several scans into one file, pull a few pages out of a long report, or turn a page into an image for a slide. Others are about content, such as getting the text out of a PDF and into Word or Markdown.

Office workers assembling application packets, students combining lecture handouts, and writers reusing text from old reports all end up doing these tasks. Going the other way, you can build a PDF from a set of images, which suits receipts, signed forms and photographed documents.

Conversion has limits worth knowing. A PDF describes where marks sit on a page rather than how a document flows, so text extraction works best on PDFs with real text. Scanned pages are pictures and will not yield editable words without character recognition. Keep a copy of the original file, and open the result to check page order before you send it on.

Common questions

Why is the text from my PDF empty or garbled?

Scanned PDFs store each page as a picture, so there is no text layer to extract. Files with unusual embedded fonts can also produce odd characters. Text-based PDFs exported from word processors convert most reliably.

Will converting a PDF to Word keep the layout exactly?

Expect a close approximation, not a perfect copy. Complex layouts with columns, tables or floating images often shift, so plan a quick cleanup pass in your word processor after the conversion.

Is there a size limit for PDF files?

Large files are handled by your device's memory, so very big or image-heavy PDFs can be slow or fail on older phones. If that happens, split the document into parts first and process them one at a time.