Convert a PDF to Word for free, without uploading it

Why avoid an online converter?

Every conversion website works the same way: you upload the PDF, its server reads it, produces the .docx and sends it back. The file has left your computer, and what happens to it next depends on the service's terms: retention period, hosting provider, subcontractors. For a manual or a résumé, that's fine. For a contract, the other side's submissions, a payslip or a medical record, it is a transfer of data to a third party that you must be able to justify, and that professional secrecy often rules out.

The good news is that conversion needs no server: software installed on your computer can do it. The risks of online tools, for a PDF you want to anonymize, are covered in anonymize a PDF online or offline.

How do you convert a PDF to Word with Word?

If Word is already installed, this is the simplest method, and it costs nothing extra. Microsoft documents it for Word for Microsoft 365 and Word 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016:

1. In Word, choose File › Open, then select the PDF on your disk.
2. Word tells you it will convert the PDF into an editable document, trying to reproduce its layout; confirm.
3. Review the resulting document, then save it as a .docx under a new name.

Microsoft explains that Word works on a converted copy, so you always keep the original PDF. The same page lists what doesn't convert well: tables with cell spacing, page colors and page borders, tracked changes, frames, footnotes that span more than one page, endnotes, audio, video and PDF active elements, bookmarks, PDF tags and comments, and font effects such as glow or shadow. It also warns that if the PDF is mostly graphics, the whole page may come through as an image, and then the text can't be edited.

Can you do it for free with LibreOffice?

Partly. LibreOffice is a free, open-source office suite installed on your computer. Its official guide says that Draw, its drawing program, can open PDF files, and that the contents of a PDF can be edited with specialized tools, Draw among them. Writer, the word processor, is not among the applications that open PDFs.

In practice, Draw shows each page with its text blocks and images: you fix a sentence, move a block, then export back to PDF. That's handy for a quick correction. But the result is still a page-by-page drawing, not a document whose text flows from one page to the next: to get a real .docx, you have to copy the text into Writer. Draw doesn't do character recognition either, so a scanned page opens as an image.

What about a scanned PDF?

A scanned PDF, or a photo of a document saved as a PDF, contains no text: each page is an image. Neither Word nor Draw finds any words to convert. You first need optical character recognition (OCR), which reads the image and works out the text.

Plenty of online tools offer OCR, with the same drawback as above: the scan goes to a server. Reading it locally avoids that transfer. That's what AnonymFiles does: scanned pages are read on the computer by Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine built into the app, in French and English. For the same reading applied to redaction, see anonymize a scanned PDF.

OCR is never perfect: proper names, figures, stamps and handwriting are the most error-prone. Always review the converted document next to the scan before you use it.

Which method should you choose?

For a text PDF and occasional use, Word is enough, or LibreOffice for a simple fix. A tool like AnonymFiles makes sense when you regularly receive confidential scans, such as the other side's exhibits, and want to make them editable without sending them anywhere, then prepare them for an AI.

How do you convert a PDF to Word with AnonymFiles?

Conversion is a separate tool, distinct from preparing a case file. There are two ways to reach it in the app:

• the command palette (⌘K on a Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows), “Tools” group, “Convert a PDF to Word” command;
• the “Help” screen in the sidebar, “Convert a PDF to Word” guide, “Choose a PDF” button.

1. Choose the PDF. A “Convert a PDF to Word” window opens; only PDF files are offered.
2. Choose where to save. The “Save the Word document” window suggests the same name, as a .docx, in the PDF's folder. The app never overwrites an existing file: pick a new name if needed.
3. Let the conversion run. Pages with text are read directly; scanned pages go through local OCR.
4. Open the document. The folder opens with the file selected, and a message reminds you: “The conversion redacts nothing: prepare it as a document before sending it to an AI.”

The original PDF is not modified. The app's audit log records that a conversion took place, without the document's name or content.

What does the conversion keep, and what does it lose?

The Word document is not a touched-up copy of the PDF: it is written from scratch from the text that was read. That's deliberate: nothing in the original file other than its text (images, properties, links, metadata) carries over into the .docx.

In other words, AnonymFiles doesn't try to reproduce the layout: it gives you clean text you can rework, quote or hand to an AI. If you need the original look, keep the PDF: that's also what the app redacts with the same layout when it has to be passed on.

Three cases are refused with a clear message: a password-protected PDF (“save it without protection”), a PDF with more than 500 pages that would need OCR, and a PDF in which no text could be read.

Is the converted document anonymized?

No, and that's intentional. Conversion is a tool for working on your own documents: the Word file contains every name, address and number from the PDF, in the clear. To send it to ChatGPT, Claude or Le Chat, drop it into AnonymFiles as a case-file document: names, addresses, IBANs, email addresses and phone numbers are detected and replaced with stable placeholders such as [PERSONNE_1], and you review the copy next to the original before anything is exported. The full method is in pseudonymize a document for AI, and the case of documents received from the other side in analyzing the other side's filings with AI.

You don't have to convert in order to anonymize, either: a PDF, even a scanned one, can be dropped in as it is. To pass it on to someone, the export redacts it with the same layout, with labeled black boxes and the text actually removed; see redact a PDF. And if you're unsure whether to use placeholders or black boxes: pseudonymization or redaction, which should you choose?

How much does conversion with AnonymFiles cost?

AnonymFiles is not a free converter. It is a local anonymizer for professionals, and PDF-to-Word conversion is one of its tools: there is a 14-day trial with every feature, then an annual license per seat, at €290 excl. VAT per year, €240 excl. VAT per seat from three seats, and a quote above 20 seats. Details are on the pricing page.

If you only need to convert a text PDF now and then, Word or LibreOffice will do without paying anything more. The app becomes useful when conversion is part of work on confidential files: scans to read, documents to anonymize, AI answers to restore with the real names. Typical situations are described in the use cases, and the full workflow in how it works.