How to Easily Convert PDFs to Word Documents in Python

Pulling off high-fidelity PDF to Word conversions starts with an understanding the PDF content type.

There are two basic types of PDF content — Vector and Raster. Vector PDFs primarily store text objects, images, and lines, while Raster PDFs primarily display content as bitmap graphics (pixels).

When we go about converting PDFs to Word documents, we should ideally use conversion solutions optimized to handle the distinct PDF content types. Otherwise, we may end up with poor representations of our PDF content.

Using the ready-to-run Python code examples provided further down the page, we can take advantage of two free APIs for automating high-fidelity Vector and Raster PDF conversions to Word DOCX format.

We can call either of these APIs in our Python application depending on the PDF content type we’re starting with, and we’ll end up with consistent, high-quality DOCX documents.

To begin structuring either of our API calls, we can start by installing the client SDK. Let’s run the following pip install command:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Next, let’s quickly turn our attention to API call authorization. We’ll need a free API key to make our conversions (this will allow us to make up to 800 conversions per month with no additional commitments).

Let’s now copy from the below code examples to add our imports and call our conversion functions. In both sets of code examples, we can replace the ‘YOUR_API_KEY’ placeholder text with our API key to authorize our requests.

To convert make high-fidelity Vector PDF to Word conversions, let’s use the following code:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'



# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ConvertDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/inputfile' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.

try:
    # Convert PDF to Word DOCX Document
    api_response = api_instance.convert_document_pdf_to_docx(input_file)
    pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling ConvertDocumentApi->convert_document_pdf_to_docx: %s\n" % e)

And to make high-fidelity Raster PDF to Word conversions, let’s use the following code instead:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'



# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ConvertDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/inputfile' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.

try:
    # Convert PDF to Word DOCX Document based on rasterized version of the PDF
    api_response = api_instance.convert_document_pdf_to_docx_rasterize(input_file)
    pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling ConvertDocumentApi->convert_document_pdf_to_docx_rasterize: %s\n" % e)

That’s all there is to it — no more code required! Now we can easily make high-fidelity conversions to Word starting with two distinct PDF content types.