Document Converter

Three Document Conversions in One Panel

The Document Converter puts three everyday text jobs behind one set of buttons: pulling the text out of a Word document, turning a Word document into a simple PDF, and pulling the text out of a PDF. You switch between them with the mode cards at the top of Converter Settings: Mode 1 DOCX to Text, Mode 2 DOCX to PDF and Mode 3 PDF to Text. The page opens in Mode 1.

It is built for text, not layout. Think of copying the wording of a contract into an email, pasting a report into a content management system without Word's hidden formatting, checking the word count of a manuscript, or recovering the words from a PDF that will not let you copy cleanly. If you need a pixel-perfect copy of a designed Word document, this is not the tool, and the sections below explain exactly why.

Each Mode, and Where It Runs

Mode 1: DOCX to Text

Mammoth reads the .docx package in your browser and returns its raw text: paragraphs separated by line breaks, with bold, colours, fonts, images and tables flattened away. Nothing is uploaded in this mode. The Download PDF button stays disabled.

Mode 2: DOCX to PDF

The same raw text extraction happens first, in your browser. The extracted text is then posted to the site's PDF endpoint, where the tc-lib-pdf library writes it onto A4 portrait pages in Helvetica at 11 points with 40-point margins. The PDF comes straight back in the response; the code does not save it on the server. The result is clean and readable, but it is a text document: headings lose their size, tables become loose lines, and images are absent.

Mode 3: PDF to Text

The PDF file is uploaded and read on the server, and the combined text of all pages is returned. On this all-in-one page no page selection fields are shown, so the whole document is extracted. Text-based PDFs (exported from Word, Google Docs or a browser) work well. Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages with no text layer, so the status reports that no extractable text was found; this tool does not do OCR. For page ranges and parser options, use the dedicated PDF to Text converter.

Walkthrough

1. Click the mode card you need. Switching modes clears the previous result.
2. Drag your file onto the drop area or press Select File. The line below shows the name and size in KB.
3. Press Convert Now. The Status tile changes to Processing, then Completed or Error.
4. Read the result in Output. The Words and Characters tiles count it for you.
5. Press Copy Text to put it on the clipboard, or Download Text to save it. The .txt file takes your original file name, so contract.docx becomes contract.txt.
6. In Mode 2, press Download PDF to save contract.pdf.
7. Clear resets the file and the output.

The page checks extensions before converting. A PDF dropped while Mode 1 or Mode 2 is active, or a DOCX in Mode 3, produces an "Invalid file" status with the message that the file does not match the current conversion mode. Change the mode and press Convert Now again.

About the Text Font Size and Line Spacing Boxes

Below the drop area are Text Font Size (8 to 18, default 11) and Line Spacing (1 to 2.5, default 1.4). In the current code these values are not sent anywhere: the DOCX to PDF request carries only the text and the file name, and the server always uses 11-point Helvetica. Changing them has no effect on the PDF or on the text output. Earlier descriptions of this page said otherwise; the code is what decides.

Picking the Right Mode for the Job

• Pasting Word content into a website or email: Mode 1. You get clean text without hidden styles, and the document never leaves your computer.
• Sending a quick read-only version of a Word draft: Mode 2. Fine for plain prose; poor for anything visually designed.
• Quoting from a PDF report: Mode 3. Faster than selecting text page by page.
• Counting words for a submission limit: any mode; the Words tile updates after conversion.
• Keeping fonts, images and tables in a PDF: none of these modes. Export to PDF from Word or another office suite instead.

Tips

• Save older .doc files as .docx first. Only .docx is accepted; Mammoth reads the Office Open XML format, not the legacy binary one.
• Review numbered and bulleted lists in the output. Mammoth's raw text extraction keeps the words but not automatic numbers or bullet symbols.
• For PDFs with columns, check the reading order of the output; the text comes back in the order the PDF stores it, which is not always the visual order.
• If a DOCX to PDF result shows odd symbols, test with a short sample first; the PDF is written with a single standard font.

What Not to Do

• Do not expect password-protected Word files to open; Mammoth cannot read encrypted .docx packages.
• Do not use Mode 3 on scans or photographed pages; there is no OCR.
• Do not upload confidential PDFs in Mode 3 if policy forbids sending them to an outside server. Mode 1 keeps the file local; Mode 2 sends the extracted text, not the file.
• Do not rely on the Font Size or Line Spacing boxes to change anything.

Limitations

Output is always plain text or a plain text PDF. Formatting, images, headers, footers, footnote placement, comments and tracked changes are not reproduced. No page selection is offered in Mode 3 on this page. Only one file is processed at a time. Requests to the server are rate-limited like the site's other tools. If you only ever need one direction, the single-purpose DOCX to PDF converter and DOCX to Text converter pages run just that mode.

Frequently Asked Questions