Converting files
What kinds of files can be converted to PDF, and back?
Almost anything you can print can become a PDF: Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, OpenDocument files, photos (including iPhone HEIC), text, CSV, web pages and ZIP files of documents. Going the other way, a PDF can become Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG, plain text or an archival PDF/A.
"Convert it to PDF" and "can you send it as Word?" are two of the most common requests in any office. They are not mirror images of each other, and knowing why saves a lot of frustration.
Into PDF: almost anything you can print
A PDF is a description of printed pages. Anything that can be laid out on pages can become one, and the result looks the same on every device. These all convert cleanly:
| You have | Tool | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Word (.docx, .doc, .rtf) | Word to PDF | The layout as Word shows it |
| Excel (.xlsx, .xls, .csv) | Excel to PDF | Sheets laid out on pages; you can fit wide sheets to one page wide |
| PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt) | PowerPoint to PDF | One slide per page |
| OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp) | ODT to PDF and its two siblings | Same as the Office files |
| Photos (.jpg, .png, .webp) | JPG to PDF, PNG to PDF | One picture per page, in your order |
| iPhone photos (.heic) | HEIC to PDF | The same, without converting to JPG first |
| Text (.txt, .md) | TXT to PDF | Clean pages of text |
| A web page (.html) | HTML to PDF | The page laid out for paper |
| A ZIP of documents or photos | ZIP to PDF | One PDF from everything inside |
Out of PDF: depends on what is inside
Going the other way is harder, because a PDF does not remember how it was made. It records where each letter and line sits on the page, not that this was a paragraph, a table or a heading. A converter has to work that structure back out.
- To Word, Excel or PowerPoint. PDF to Word, PDF to Excel and PDF to PowerPoint rebuild the page as content you can edit. Simple documents come out close to the original; busy layouts may need small fixes afterwards.
- To pictures. PDF to JPG and PDF to PNG save each page as an image at 72, 150 or 300 DPI, or save only the photos inside the PDF.
- To text. PDF to Text gives you the words, reading scanned pages with OCR.
- To PDF/A. PDF to PDF/A makes an archival copy that courts and archives accept.
Scans are the exception
A scanned page is a photograph of paper. Turned into Word, it arrives as a picture of the page, so its words cannot be edited. To work with the words, run it through OCR PDF first, or copy them out with PDF to Text.
Not sure which one you need?
The PDF Converter page takes any of these files. Drop one in: a PDF is offered the formats it can become, and anything else goes straight to the tool that makes it a PDF, with the file already loaded.
Common questions
Can every file be converted to PDF?
Anything that can be printed can, in principle. KovaPDF converts Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OpenDocument files, JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC photos, text, CSV, web pages and ZIP files of these.
Why does a PDF converted to Word look different?
A PDF records where things sit on the page, not how the document was built. The converter has to rebuild paragraphs and tables from positions, so complex layouts can shift and may need small fixes.
Can I edit a scanned PDF after converting it to Word?
Not directly: a scanned page arrives in Word as a picture. Run the PDF through OCR PDF first to turn the picture of the words into real text.