01Why it breaks
- PDFs store each line or word at fixed positions, not as paragraphs.
- Columns and tables become text boxes or tabs.
- Fonts that are not on your computer are replaced.
02A clean-up routine
- Turn on Show/Hide (the ¶ button) to see hard line breaks and tabs.
- Use Find and Replace to remove extra paragraph marks: search ^p^p and replace with a marker, then replace single ^p with a space, then restore the marker as ^p.
- Select all, choose Normal, then apply heading styles to titles.
- Replace tab-aligned columns with a real table (Insert, Table, or Convert Text to Table).
- Replace fonts in bulk with Home, Replace, Format, Font.
03When to retype instead
For a short document with complex tables, copying the text into a clean template is often faster than repairing the converted file. For scanned PDFs the text is an image: run OCR first (Word’s open-PDF converter, Adobe Acrobat or a free OCR tool).
Q&AFAQ
Why are my images missing?
They may have been placed behind text or anchored far from the original position. Turn on Selection Pane under Home, Select to find them.
Can you fix it for me?
Yes, that is exactly the kind of job I take. Send the PDF and the Word file with your deadline for a quote.
Rather have it done for you?
Word formatting service, from about us$9. Reports, essays and proposals: headings, table of contents, page numbers and figures done for you, usually the same day.