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PDF résumé to Word

The old résumé you can no longer edit, back in a document you can.

More free conversions, where you upload. The Fylane extension does the same work inside any upload form, on its own free share every day.Add to Chrome

How to convert PDF résumé to Word

  1. Drop the PDF résumé.
  2. Press Convert.
  3. Open the .docx in Word, Pages or Google Docs and edit it.

What happens to your file

Almost everybody loses the original document eventually and is left with the PDF they sent. This converts that PDF back into a .docx you can edit — text, headings, lists and most tables intact.

What comes back is a faithful copy of the words, not of the design. A PDF has no idea what a heading style is; the converter reconstructs the structure it can see. Expect to redo some spacing, and to check that a two-column layout has not become one.

If the PDF is a scan — a photograph or a fax of a printed page — there is no text to recover and the result will be a picture. Run OCR PDF on it first, then convert.

When you are done editing, convert it back to PDF before sending it anywhere.

Questions

Will my formatting survive?

The words always do. Simple one-column résumés come through nearly unchanged. Anything built from text boxes, heavy tables or two columns will need tidying, because the PDF does not record which is which.

My résumé came out as a picture. Why?

Because the PDF is a scan rather than a document — there is no text layer to convert. Run it through OCR PDF first to add one, then convert to Word.

Is it better to rebuild my résumé from scratch?

If it is more than a few years old, often yes. But starting from your own words is much faster than starting from an empty page, and that is what this gives you.

Can I edit the .docx on a phone?

Yes. Word, Google Docs and Pages all open a .docx on mobile. Do the final PDF conversion afterwards so the layout is fixed before you send it.

Do it once, not on every form

Fixing a file here means downloading it and going back to the form. The Fylane extension does this work inside the form instead, on the file you already have.

And it keeps the result. The next application that asks for a résumé, a cover letter and a photo fills all three from one tap, each one refitted to what that site accepts.

Your files stay in the browser, encrypted, on your machine. Nothing is uploaded to keep them and nothing is sent anywhere to fill a form.

Filmed from the extension: three upload fields on a job application, filled from one tap.

Add to Chrome — freeWhat it does

Do this in code

curl -X POST https://api.fylane.dev/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FYLANE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "file_id": "<file id>",
    "operation": "convert",
    "options": {
      "to": "docx"
    }
  }'

The same operation, convert — Documents into another document format: Office, text and HTML to PDF by default, or by `to` into docx, odt, rtf, txt, html, xlsx, ods, csv, pptx, odp, md or epub (Markdown and EPUB through pandoc). Images to WebP. Upload first with the quickstart; every option is on the operations page. 500 free credits a month, then $5 per thousand.