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Convert or export PDFs to other file formats

  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. What's new in Acrobat
    3. Keyboard shortcuts
    4. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. Action Wizard (Acrobat Pro)
    12. PDFs converted to web pages
    13. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    14. PDF articles
    15. Geospatial PDFs
    16. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    17. Change the default font for adding text
    18. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to JPG
    4. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    5. File format options for PDF export
    6. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. About certificate signatures
    5. Certificate-based signatures
    6. Validating digital signatures
    7. Adobe Approved Trust List
    8. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

You can easily export or convert one or more PDFs to different file formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The available formats include both text and image formats.

Watch a quick video tutorial and get started

Convert PDFs to Word, RTF, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, or other formats

Note:

You cannot export PDF Portfolios, or PDFs within them, to other file formats.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat, and then choose Tools > Export PDF.

    The various formats to which you can export the PDF file are displayed.

    Export PDF options
    Choose the format to which you want to export your PDF.

    Note:

    You can also choose File > Export To > [File Type] to export the PDF file to a desired format.  

  2. Select the file format to which you want to export the PDF file and a version (or format), if available. For example, if you choose to export the PDF file to Word format, you will get an option to export the PDF into Word Document (.docx) or Word 97-2003 Document (.doc) version.  

    Note:

    You can configure the conversion settings by clicking the gear icon adjacent to the selected file format. Conversion settings can also be edited by selecting the Convert From PDF category in the Preferences dialog box.

  3. Click Export.
    The Export dialog box is displayed.

    Click Export in Acrobat
    Export your PDF document to a local folder or Adobe Document Cloud.

  4. In the Export dialog box, select a location where you want to save the file.

  5. Click Save to export the PDF to the selected file format.

    By default, the source filename is used with the new extension, and the exported file is saved in the same folder as the source file.

    Note:

    When you save a PDF in an image format, each page is saved as a separate file, and each filename is appended with the page number.

Conversion options

You can configure conversion options before you save the file. By default, the conversion options specified under Preferences are used. 

  1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Convert From PDF.
  2. Choose a format from the Converting From PDF list, and then click Edit Settings.
  3. Choose the conversion settings, and then click OK.

Export images in a PDF to another format

In addition to saving every page (all text, images, and vector objects on a page) to an image format using the File > Export To > Image > [Image Type] command, you can export each image in a PDF to a separate image file.

Note:

You can export raster images, but not vector objects.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat, and then choose ToolsExport PDF.

    The various formats to which you can export the PDF file are displayed.

  2. Click Image and then choose the image file format that you want to save the images in.

    Export to Image Options
    Choose the format that you want to save the exported images in.

  3. To configure the conversion settings for the selected file format, click the gear icon .

  4. In the Export All Images As [selected file format] Settings dialog box, specify the File Settings, Color Management, Conversion, and Extraction settings for the file type.

  5. In the Extraction settings, for Exclude Images Smaller Than, select the smallest size of image to be extracted. Select No Limit to extract all images.

  6. Click OK to return to the return to the Export Your PDF To Any Format screen.

  7. Select the Export All Images option to extract and save only the images from the PDF file.

    Note:

    If you do not select the Export All Images option, all pages within the PDF are saved in the selected image file format.  

  8. Click Export.
    The Export dialog box is displayed.

  9. In the Export dialog box, select a location where you want to save the file.

  10. Click Save to save only the images from the PDF to the selected file format.

Export selections from a PDF to another format

If you need just a part of the PDF file in another format, you don’t need to convert the entire file and then extract the relevant content. You can select text in a PDF file and save it in one of the supported formats: DOCX, DOC, XLSX, RTF, XML, HTML, or CSV.

  1. Use the Select tool and mark the content to save.
  2. Right-click the selected text and choose Export Selection As.

    Export selection in Acrobat
    Right-click the selected text, and choose Export Selection As from the pop-up menu.

  3. Select a format from the Save As Type list and click Save.

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