PDF to Word text versus scan: a controlled editability test
We converted the same one-page design twice: once with real PDF text and once as a full-page image. The visible sources matched, but the Word documents did not contain the same kind of content.
Controlled test result
Only the PDF with a text layer produced editable words
The sentinel phrase cobalt river 4729 was present in the searchable DOCX XML and absent from the scanned DOCX. This is a direct content check, not a judgment made from screenshots.
Fixture and reproducible method
The controlled Letter-size page contains a heading, four prose lines, a three-column ruled table, names, numbers, and the sentinel phrase. The searchable source stores those elements as PDF text and vector rules. The scan source was made by rendering that same page at twice its base scale and placing the resulting raster image over a new 612 x 792 point PDF page.
- Generate both sources with the repository script at
scripts/evidence/generate_fixtures.py. - Submit each PDF to the current Converttwo
/api/convert/pdf-to-docxroute. - Inspect DOCX ZIP integrity, OOXML text, paragraphs, tables, drawings, and sentinel content.
- Render each DOCX with LibreOffice and compare it with the corresponding PDF at 108 pixels per inch.
The September 14 run used current application code at commit 3caf8a7, Python 3.11, pdf2docx 0.5.13, PyMuPDF 1.28.0, and LibreOffice 26.2.5.2 on Windows. The repository deployment pin is pdf2docx 0.5.8, so exact reconstruction details can vary on another environment.
What the rendered Word files looked like
Measured source and output properties
| Property | Searchable path | Scanned path |
|---|---|---|
| Source PDF | 4,055 bytes; 50 words; zero images | 56,166 bytes; zero words; one page image |
| Converted DOCX | 37,554 bytes; seven paragraphs; one table; no inline image | 81,856 bytes; one paragraph; no table; one inline image |
| Text in DOCX XML | 312 characters; sentinel found | Zero characters; sentinel absent |
| Rendered output | One Letter page; 48 extractable words; no page image | One Letter page; zero extractable words; one page image |
| Pixel comparison | 2.96% of pixels differed from the searchable source at 108 ppi | 9.32% of pixels differed from the scan source at 108 ppi |
What this result means in practice
A page can look readable without containing any readable text for the converter. In this test, the scan remained visible because it was carried into Word as a picture, but searching or editing the printed words was impossible. The converter does not perform OCR.
The searchable result was editable and reconstructed the ruled region as a real Word table, but editability did not guarantee perfect transcription or geometry: the final letter in “Item Alpha” was clipped in the rendered DOCX and line positions shifted slightly. A converted DOCX should therefore be proofread even when its source has a clean text layer.
These are simple, generated one-page sources. They do not predict performance for handwriting, skewed camera scans, unusual fonts, multilingual OCR, complex forms, or damaged PDFs. No OCR engine was tested because Converttwo does not include one.
Download the exact test files
Test your own text-based PDF
Keep the source PDF beside the result and verify editable words, tables, names, and numbers.
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