Text, pictures, or whole pages
A PDF is the right file when the page should look stable. It is the wrong file when you need to rewrite a paragraph. The tools on this page cover both situations, and they do not all do the same kind of work.
Text tools such as PDF to Word read the text layer. They will not rebuild a magazine layout, and they return little from a scan. Picture tools render pages to JPG or PNG. Page tools merge, split, rotate, and number pages without retyping them. Compress rewrites the file and often does little to a photo-heavy scan.
In 2026 most application portals still want one PDF under a size cap. Merge the pieces, then try Compress PDF, and if the scan stays large, export pages to images and rebuild a smaller PDF.
If you already know the job, start with PDF to Word or PDF to Excel.
Every format on the site is listed from the homepage.
Layout is a different job
Open the tool that names your two formats and read what the download will contain before you delete the original. If a result does not match that description, tell us.
Which PDF job you actually have
Decide what the next person needs. If they need to edit a sentence, use a text tool such as PDF to Word or PDF to Text, and expect paragraphs rather than a cloned layout. If they need to see the page, use PDF to JPG or send the PDF itself. If they need one file, merge. If the portal rejected the size, compress and then look at the result, because a photo-heavy scan often barely shrinks. If a records office asked for PDF/A, know that setting a label is not a certified PDF/A file.
Scans are the trap. A photographed page has no text layer. OCR can add one, in English, as an overlay. It will not fix a crooked photo or a handwriting page the engine cannot read. Rotate and crop before you OCR if the page is sideways. Then extract text. Do not start with Word and hope.
Signatures, watermarks, and page numbers here are visual edits on the PDF you already have. A signature is an image stamp, not a digital certificate. Redaction covers matches in the text layer. It does not paint over text that exists only as pixels in a scan. Open the file and scroll every page you meant to change. The tools run in the browser, up to 100 MB.
Before you merge, name the files in the order the reader will see. Before you split, note the page numbers on a scrap of paper. Before you send a Word extract to anyone official, read a page in the middle, not only the first paragraph. Browser PDF tools are the right speed for ordinary packets under 100 MB. They are the wrong tool for a certified archive, a legal filing that must match a desktop print, or a cryptographic signature.