Convert Pdf Files To Word For Mac

Convert PDF to Word/RTF on your Mac. Aiseesoft Mac PDF to Word Converter can convert PDF files to Microsoft Word documents (.docx) and RTF files on Mac losslessly. For password protected PDF files, you need to print the password to get the secured original text, images, graphics and layout in the output Word/RTF file with the best quality. This is a highly user-friendly PDF to Word Converter for Mac that applies a host of state of the art methods to convert PDF files with accuracy and reliability. It has the capability of converting PDF files into MS Office extensions like; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

  • This free online PDF to DOC converter allows you to save a PDF file as an editable document in Microsoft Word DOC format, ensuring better quality than many other converters. Click the UPLOAD FILES button and select up to 20 PDF files you wish to convert. Wait for the conversion process to finish.
  • As the inventor of the PDF file format, Adobe makes sure our Acrobat Word to PDF conversion tool preserves your document formatting. When you convert DOC and DOCX files with the online tool, your fonts, images, and alignment will look as expected on Mac.

Are you a Macbook user and working on MS Word 2011 or earlier and PDF a lot? Then there is a good chance you come across vexing issues as this:

You just finish a three-page word document with dozens of hyperlinks on it; you save it as PDF. But before you send it to your colleagues via email, you noticed that most of or even all the hyperlinks, including the table of contents and reference, are not clickable at all.

They are blue and underlined as they should be, but there are just no links embedded there. Wired, huh?

If you have ever experienced or are experiencing this trouble, you are not alone. This hyperlink not being retained after Word to PDF conversion happens to all macOS users like you.

No need to worry if it confuses you. We’ve got a few workarounds for you. Just read on to learn how to convert Word to PDF with hyperlinks on Mac.

Why are your hyperlinks not clickable in PDF on Mac?

The answer is simple: you are using Preview, the default PDF reader on macOS, to read your converted PDF documents, instead of the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe.

There is one thing in Acrobat Reader that Preview does not have. It’s the auto link detection feature. It detects texts starting with http:// or https:// or email address and create links from them. So if you use the free Adobe reader instead of Preview to read PDF on Mac, you may see different results.

Another reason, as people pointed out, may be that Word’s Mac version does not have the “keep hyperlink option” as the Windows version does. This directly results in confusion to those new Mac users who just switch from Windows.

6 methods to convert Word to PDF with hyperlinks on Mac

Below is a list of 6 methods to convert Word to PDF while preserving hyperlinks on Mac. Some may work for you, others may not. If it disappoints you, try upgrading your tools you are working on. You just have to make sure it’s not a software thing.

1. “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility” option in Word

If you are using Word 2016 for Mac (or later) and you lose your hyperlinks after exporting Word to PDF, try the following to get the trouble fixed:

Step 1: Insert links, and make sure all of them works fine. In other words, avoid inserting dead links to the file.

Step 2: Go to File > Save as, and choose PDF in the file format options.

Step 3: Check the box “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility”, and click Export.

This will normally retain the hyperlinks on your new PDF documents. But there seems to be another bummer coming out of this trick. It converts links, but will probably mess up the font formatting. The problem still exists in 2020. So if you can’t accept this, skip to the other methods below.

2. Keep hyperlinks live by using Pages to do the Word to PDF conversion

Pages is the default Word-like software on Apple Macbook. But you may not be using it just simply because it’s not like Word. But in some scenarios, Pages fixes things that Word can’t.

Processing Doc. or Docx. files in Pages will help you bypass the PDF hyperlink issue on Mac. Just follow the steps below:

Step 1: Go to File > Print, click the PDF button down below the pop-up window, and select Save as PDF.

Step 2: Put on a name for the PDF, choose a location to save PDF, and click Save.

Convert Pdf Files To Word For Mac File

This is where Pages beats Word. Whether the hyperlinks are real URLs (starting with http:// or https://) or not, Pages embeds them just fine.

3. Use WPS — best free MS Office alternative on Mac (recommended)

You may think of switching from Mac to Windows. After all, converting Word to PDF using the Windows version of Word won’t bring you all these. It has the “keep hyperlinks and bookmarks” setting, which makes things much simpler.

Well, WPS, the free Office alternative on Mac, will save you from the grand project of switching the operation system. This Chinese software works perfectly the same on Mac as you are using Word on Windows. Since it’s completely free and does some optimization over Office, it’s even much better than it’s competitor.

You can convert Word to PDF with hyperlinks on Mac by using WPS for Mac by the following steps:

Convert mac pages to word

Step 1: Download WPS for Mac here, and open your Word file with it.

Mac

Step 2: Go to File > Export to PDF. Under the Export options, check the Hyperlink box, and click OK.

Step 3: Wait until it completes saving, and click Open the File button on the new window.

You will see the hand icon when you hover you mouse on each hyperlink. That means all of them are clickable. Now you can say goodbye officially to Word for Mac.

4. Google Docs approach

Convert Pdf Files To Word Format

Google Docs can also do the same thing with similar procedures, which are no more than Open > Check links > Save/Download as PDF. And all your links will be included in the new PDF file.

But just as the Save as PDF feature in Word, Google Docs don’t retain the formatting either. If those hyperlinks are way more important to you than those fancy formatting, this method will do you just fine.

5. Other paid tools

I personally would not recommend this approach. Price is the biggest concern. Why would I spend money to do something that I can simply get done with tons of free tricks?

But if you are not only looking for a paid app that did only this, you may give those a try. There are actually many PDF tools in the market, PDFElement, PDFPen Pro, free DF WIZ, etc. You probably need a few minutes to compare the price and features before you purchase.

6. A fun fix without using any tool, though complicated

This is just shared to entertain, not for serious problem-solving. It’s more than a few clicks. A few settings and adjustment, and even patience may be required. But it does get hyperlinks back where they supposed to be in PDF on Mac.

Step 1: In you Word document for Mac, put a blank line above the line where there is a linked word or phrases.

Step 2: Paste the link to that blank line, and shrink the link to the size that fits right above the texts where you want to insert that link.

Step 3: Select the link and adjust the link spacing to 1.0.

Step 4: Make the link line invisible by changing it’s font color to white.

Then you can go with the regular Save as PDF steps. After that, test each link by hovering the mouse over the texts and links and clicking on it.

Final words

That’s pretty much it. You can try the each of these methods until you find one working well. Don’t ask how to convert PDF to Word with hyperlinks again. It’s no big deal anymore, because you have tons of methods to work through it.

PDFs are the core of many businesses. They are much safer and more professional than other types of documents for companies and their generally smaller file size makes them a great option for long-term storage or for sharing easily with others. Unlike other formats, PDF documents can be directly modified only with PDF editors. However, some programs are fairly expensive, while others don’t have as many features as Microsoft Office software. So, it is often very useful and even necessary to turn PDF files to other formats, for example, Word. Today, we will introduce some programs to help you convert PDF file to Word on Mac.

Best Applications to Turn PDF into Word on Mac

Apowersoft PDF Converter

Apowersoft PDF Converter is one of the best PDF programs for batch converting files. The software has a quick and easy-to-use interface and supports many kinds of file formats, such as Word, Excel, PPT, JPG, PNG, and so on. Furthermore, it has other features, like turning other formats to PDF and combing PDF files. This is a paid tool, but it allows you to try its features – you can convert the first 5 pages of each PDF file for free. This program works very smoothly, and the output files keep their original quality.

Follow the steps below to learn how to convert PDF to Word on Mac.

  1. Download the program and launch it.
  2. To start converting, click the “Add file(s)” button to choose files, or select one or more files that you need, and simply drag and drop the file(s) to the software.
  3. Choose an output format that you want. In this case, you can choose doc. or docx.
  4. Click “Start Converting” and wait for a while and it will help you complete the conversion.

Generally, the program will set a default output folder, however, if you don’t want to store your converted documents there, you can click the three-dots button to choose another place as the output directory before starting the conversion.

PDFMate PDF Converter for Mac

PDFMate PDF Converter for Mac is a simple program which can convert PDF file to Word on Mac. Just like our program, this one can also do batch conversions, but it supports fewer file types than the former. It can only turn PDF to Word, SWF, IMAGE, TXT, HTML, and EPUB. It cannot convert other formats to PDF. The program supports macOS 10.6 or higher. And as we tested, it can also run on macOS Mojave. Moreover, it enables you to select the pages you want to convert in a PDF file before the conversion.

Let’s follow the instructions below to see how it works.

  1. Go to PDFMate PDF Converter for Mac page to download, install and run the program.
  2. Click the button “Add PDF” and select the files you want to convert.
  3. On the panel of the output file formats, choose “Word” as the output format (In general, the program sets Word as default output format).
  4. Click the “Convert” button to turn PDF into Word on Mac.

PDFelement

PDFelement is an excellent program available on Mac and iOS platforms. Unlike the previous programs introduced, this one is specialized in PDF editing. It has a very simple, minimalistic and user-friendly interface. But it contains many awesome tools, including comment, highlighting, cropping, OCR, etc.

  1. Download the program on your computer. Once complete, launch the program and click on the “Convert PDF” button on the main interface.
  2. Choose a file and then hit “Open” button.
  3. After that you can view the PDF content, you can modify the content or directly click the “To Word” button above the file page.
  4. When ready, click “Convert” to convert PDF to Word on Mac, and then the PDF will be converted into Word.

PDFs have become the de facto standard format for a lot of business-related data and information storage, whether it’s for personal banking, school assignments, or accounting for a large corporation; we’ve all used a PDF at some point or another. Virtually, all important documents are now sent as PDFs. If your work involves using PDFs and you need to make sure you have the best way to manage and convert them, which works quickly and easily, every time. The main disadvantage of the PDFelement is that you cannot do batch conversions. It can only allow you to convert one PDF file to Word at a time. Both PDFMate and Apowersoft PDF Converter work well, but PDFMate supports fewer functions. If you are looking for a powerful business-oriented PDF-management tool for Mac, the Apowersoft PDF Converter is worth checking out.

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