Skip to content
PDFQuick

PDF OCR to Word

Turn a scanned or photographed PDF into an editable Word document. Every page is rendered and read with optical character recognition inside your browser, with a live progress bar, and the recognised text is saved as a real .docx file.

Select a scanned PDF to read

Drag & drop here, or choose from your device.

PDF files · up to 100.0 MB each

Proofread the result: optical character recognition is a best-effort reading of an image. Always compare the Word file against the original before relying on it for anything legal or financial.

Privacy note: this tool runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your file is read into memory on your own device and is never uploaded to PDFQuick or any third party. Read our privacy policy.

When to use PDF OCR to Word

  • Make a scanned contract editable in Word.
  • Recover the text from photographed book pages or old typed letters.

Tips for better results

  • Choose the document's language — accuracy drops sharply with the wrong one.
  • Scans at 300 dpi with straight pages give the best results.

Good to know

  • Handwriting is not recognised reliably.
  • Recognition runs on your device and can take a while on long documents.

How to use PDF OCR to Word

  1. Add your scanned PDF

    Pick the PDF you want to read. Sharp, straight scans at 200 dpi or more give the best results.

  2. Choose the language

    Select the language of the document so the recogniser uses the right character set and dictionary.

  3. Watch it work

    The progress bar shows each page as it is rendered and recognised. Nothing is uploaded while this happens.

  4. Download the Word file

    Check the recognised text on screen, then download a .docx you can edit in Word, Google Docs or Pages.

Why use PDFQuick for this

Real OCR, not extraction

Scanned pages have no text layer. This tool actually reads the pixels, so image-only PDFs become searchable text.

Completely private

The recogniser runs in your browser. Your scanned contracts and ID documents never reach a server.

Live progress

A page-by-page progress bar tells you exactly how far along a long document is.

Genuine .docx output

The result is a valid Open XML Word document, not a renamed text file.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate is the recognition?

On clean, straight scans of printed text, accuracy is typically very high. Handwriting, faint faxes, skewed pages and heavy background patterns will produce mistakes, so always proofread the result.

Why does the first run take longer?

The recognition engine and the language data are downloaded once and then cached by your browser. Later runs start much faster.

Does it keep the original layout?

No. OCR recovers text, not page design. Columns, tables and images are not reproduced in the Word file.

Can it handle a 100-page scan?

Yes, but recognition takes a few seconds per page, so plan for several minutes. Keep the tab open while it runs.

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. Only the open-source language data is downloaded to your browser; your PDF stays on your device.

Related guides