Converting PDF to Word seems straightforward, but the reality is more complex.
PDF stores text as character coordinates, while Word uses structured paragraphs.
Bridging this gap requires careful text extraction and order reconstruction.
Here's how to build a browser-based PDF to Word converter with Vue 3 and .
The challenge: PDF vs Word PDF is a presentation format — text is positioned precisely on the page.
Word is an editing format — text flows in paragraphs with styles.
Converting between them means: Extracting text from PDF coordinates Reconstructing reading order Generating structured DOCX output The stack Vue 3 with Composition API pdf-lib for PDF parsing docx for Word document generation Vite for bundling The core implementation Key implementation details
1.
Text extraction from PDF pdf-lib's returns an array of text items with position and size:
2.
Reading order reconstruction PDF stores text in drawing order, not reading order.
We sort by: Y coordinate (descending): Top to bottom X coordinate (ascending): Left to right
3.
DOCX generation The library creates Word documents programmatically:
4.
Handling edge cases Empty text: Skip items with empty text Overlapping text: Detect and handle overlapping character positions Multi-column: Group by X coordinate ranges for column detection Limitations Scanned PDFs Scanned PDFs are images, not text. pdf-lib can't extract text from images.
Solution: Detect empty text content and show error message.
Complex layouts Multi-column, tables, and floating text are hard to reconstruct accurately.
Solution: Simple layout detection and graceful degradation.
Font encoding Custom fonts may not map correctly to Word fonts.
Solution: Use standard font fallbacks.
Summary Building a browser-based PDF to Word converter involves: Loading PDF with pdf-lib Extracting text and coordinates Sorting by reading order Generating DOCX with docx library Handling edge cases (scanned PDFs, complex layouts) Try it at en.sotool.top/pdf-to-word.