Back in the day, if you were sent a PDF and tried to edit it in anything other than Adobe Acrobat, you were doomed to hours of frustration. Or you downloaded an application that you’d hope would actually work with this Sisyphean task. However, it’s 2021, and things have changed. Now you can edit a PDF in Microsoft Word quickly and easily. But, there’s a small catch.
Sometimes, when you’re working with a PDF with many images, the formatting will be a little off. According to Microsoft, “the most common format changes will be seen in lines, and pages may break differently than in the original PDF.” That isn’t all that worrisome and can be adjusted quickly if needed.
You should also know that this method is only available in Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2019, and Word 2016. I tried this method in Word 2007, and it was a major fail but, it doesn’t hurt to try.
So now that we’ve got that covered, let us show you how to edit a PDF in Microsoft Word.
How to open your PDF in Word
1. Go to File > Open.
2. Find the PDF and open it (you might have to select Browse and find the PDF in a folder).
3. Word tells you that it will make a copy of the PDF and convert its contents into a format that Word can display. The original PDF won’t be changed at all. Select OK.
That is all she wrote; I know, I thought it would be way more complicated than this but, it’s not. Now, once you’re done editing your PDF that’s been converted to a Word Doc, you can save it once again as a PDF by doing the following.
- Go to File > Save As.
- Select where you want to save your document, like OneDrive.
- In the Save as type box, choose PDF (*.pdf).
- Select Save.
My only suggestion is to make sure you open your new PDF and check the formatting to see if it needs tweaking,. If it doesn’t, you can share your newly edited PDF with whomever you wish.
