PDF to Office API

Available

Convert PDF documents into editable Microsoft Word documents, Rich Text files, and structured plain text.

Try in Playground Product Page

Need the general asynchronous conversion lifecycle?

See File Conversion for upload handling (POST /api/uploads), polling intervals, and download token authentication.

View Guide

Supported Scope & Format Limitations

PDF to Office supports editable Word and text targets: DOCX, DOC, RTF, and TXT. Converting PDF into spreadsheets or presentations (XLS, XLSX, PPTX) is strictly not supported and is rejected with a 400 error.

Supported Output Formats

DOCX (Recommended)

Microsoft Word OpenXML document. Reconstructs text flows, headings, paragraphs, and tables.

DOC

Legacy Microsoft Word 97–2003 binary format for backwards compatibility.

RTF

Rich Text Format supported by word processors across macOS, Linux, and Windows.

TXT

Clean, UTF-8 plain text extraction using native PDF text stream parsing.

Request Specification

Submit a POST request to /api/conversions with your uploaded PDF fileId:

POST /api/conversions HTTP/1.1

Host: api.orbconvert.com

Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>

Content-Type: application/json

{
  "fileId": "<FILE_ID>",
  "toFormat": "docx",
  "options": {
    "pageRange": "1-10",
    "metadata": "remove"
  }
}

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
fileId	string	Yes	The storage key returned by POST /api/uploads for the uploaded PDF.
toFormat	string	Yes	Target format. Must be one of 'docx', 'doc', 'rtf', or 'txt'. Accepted: "docx" \| "doc" \| "rtf" \| "txt"
options.pageRange	string	No	Extract and convert specific pages before document assembly (e.g. '1-5,8' or 'all'). Accepted: Expression like "1-5" or "all"
options.metadata	string	No	Sanitizes author, creation timestamp, and title from the generated Office document. Accepted: "remove" \| "keep"

Layout Fidelity & OCR Transparency

• Text Reconstruction: PDF documents store visual glyph positions rather than paragraphs. The conversion engine uses layout analysis to group text into natural paragraphs, tables, and lists.

• Scanned PDFs: PDFs containing pure raster images (e.g. scanned paper documents) without embedded font glyphs will not produce selectable text. An OCR pipeline must be run on the PDF beforehand.

• Complex Multi-Column Layouts: Magazine spreads and intricate multi-column layouts may occasionally reflow into linear paragraph structures.

Errors Specific to PDF to Office

HTTP	Error Code	Cause & Resolution
400	UNSUPPORTED_FORMAT	Requested output format is not supported (e.g. XLSX, XLS, PPTX).
400	INVALID_PAGE_RANGE	Specified page range is invalid or exceeds the total pages in the PDF.
400	CORRUPT_FILE	The uploaded PDF file is corrupted or contains an unreadable cross-reference table.

Code Examples

# Convert PDF to editable Microsoft Word DOCX with page range
curl -X POST "https://api.orbconvert.com/api/conversions" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "fileId": "<FILE_ID>",
    "toFormat": "docx",
    "options": {
      "pageRange": "1-5",
      "metadata": "remove"
    }
  }'

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