PDF to Word Without Images: How to Get Text and Images Separately

One of the most common frustrations with PDF to Word conversion is opening the output .docx file and finding that all the images are missing. The text came through fine, but every photo, chart, diagram, and screenshot from the original PDF is simply gone.

This is not a bug. It is a structural limitation of how PDF to Word conversion works, and once you understand why, the fix is obvious: use two tools, one for the text and one for the images.

This guide explains the limitation, walks through the complete two-tool workflow using the free browser-based tools on ToolzPedia, and covers when to use each approach.

Why PDF to Word converters skip images

To understand this properly you need to know a little about what a PDF actually is under the hood.

A PDF file is a container. When you export a Word document to PDF, the exporter takes your text, your styles, and your embedded images and writes them all into the PDF as separate binary streams. The text is stored as positioned character data. Each image is stored as a compressed binary object (usually JPEG or PNG) referenced by the page layout.

When a browser-based PDF to Word converter reads that file, it extracts the text character streams and groups them into paragraphs and headings. This part works well because the text data is directly accessible.

The image objects are a different problem entirely. Here is why they cannot simply be dropped into the .docx output:

Position and wrapping cannot be reconstructed. In the original Word document, the image was placed inline, or set to wrap text around it, or anchored to a specific position. When the document was exported to PDF, that positioning information was baked into the fixed page layout and discarded as a Word-level property. The converter has no way to know whether the image was inline, floating, or anchored, so it cannot recreate the correct Word image placement.

Image dimensions are ambiguous. In a PDF, an image object may be stored at 2000 x 1500 pixels but rendered at a specific size on the page. The rendered size and the stored size are separate. A converter reconstructing a Word document has to pick one or the other, and either choice may be wrong.

Image-to-text relationships are lost. In the original Word document, the image might have been positioned next to a specific paragraph, inside a table cell, or in the document header. None of that semantic relationship survives the PDF export. The converter cannot know where in the Word document the image logically belongs.

The docx format requires precise placement. Unlike HTML where images can float loosely, a properly formed .docx file needs each image to be declared with exact dimensions, wrapping mode, and either an inline or anchored position. Guessing at this would produce malformed documents that crash Word or look completely wrong.

For all of these reasons, browser-based PDF to Word converters extract text and leave images behind. This is the correct behavior. Attempting to include images with guessed placement would make the output worse, not better.

The two-tool workflow

The solution is straightforward. Instead of expecting one tool to do both jobs poorly, use two tools that each do one job well.

Tool 1: PDF to Word for the text content Tool 2: Extract Images from PDF for the image files

You end up with a clean .docx containing all the text and a folder of individual image files at full original resolution. You then place the images back into the Word document exactly where you want them, with whatever size and wrapping makes sense for your purpose.

This approach gives you more control than any automatic image-in-text reconstruction would, because you decide where each image goes in the final document rather than accepting whatever a converter guesses.

Step by step: the complete workflow

Step 1: Convert the text with PDF to Word

1. Open the PDF to Word tool
2. Upload your PDF by dragging it onto the upload zone or clicking to browse
3. The tool extracts all text from every page and builds the .docx structure
4. Download the .docx file when conversion is complete

The output document contains all paragraphs, headings (detected from font size), and body text from the original PDF. Page breaks are preserved between PDF pages.

Open the file in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, or Google Docs. Read through it to check the text is correct and the heading structure makes sense. The text is now fully editable.

Step 2: Extract the images with Extract Images from PDF

1. Open the Extract Images from PDF tool in a new tab (keep your Word document open)
2. Upload the same PDF file
3. The tool scans every page and displays all embedded image objects in a grid
4. Review the image grid to identify which images you need
5. Download individual images by clicking the download button under each one, or click Download All ZIP to get everything in one archive

The images are saved at their original embedded resolution, which is typically higher than what you would get from a screenshot. A PDF intended for print often contains images at 300 DPI or higher.

Step 3: Place images back into the Word document

1. In your Word document, position your cursor where an image should appear
2. Go to Insert, Pictures, and select the image file from your download folder
3. Resize and set the text wrapping as needed
4. Repeat for each image

You now have a complete Word document with the original text content and all the original images placed correctly.

When this workflow is most useful

Editing a received PDF contract or report

You receive a PDF with text, tables, and a company logo or chart. You need to update some of the text content and send back an editable version. Convert the text to Word for editing, extract the logo and chart as separate files, then reinsert them into the edited document.

Recovering a lost Word document

The original .docx file has been deleted or is inaccessible. A PDF version of the document survives. Converting to Word recovers the text. Extracting images recovers any photos or diagrams that were in the original file. Between the two, you can reconstruct a working Word document that closely matches the original.

Repurposing content from a PDF report

You are writing a new report or presentation and want to use text and charts from an existing PDF publication (with appropriate permission). Extract the text to get the content into an editable format. Extract the images to get the charts and diagrams at print quality. Combine them in your new document.

Updating an old proposal or template

You have a PDF of a proposal from a previous project and want to reuse the structure and images as the basis for a new one. The text conversion gives you the editable copy, the image extraction gives you the logos, diagrams, and photos at full quality.

Translating a PDF document

You need to translate the text content of a PDF into another language. Convert to Word to get an editable document you can run through a translation workflow. Extract the images separately so they can be reinserted after translation, keeping figures and charts intact.

What to expect from the text output

The PDF to Word conversion produces clean paragraph text and heading structure for most digitally created PDFs. A few things are worth knowing before you start editing:

Headings are detected by relative font size. If the original PDF used a heading style that is only slightly larger than body text, it may come through as body text in the Word output. Manually apply the correct heading style in Word where needed.

Multi-column layouts become sequential paragraphs. A PDF with two side-by-side columns of text will produce the columns as paragraphs that follow each other down the page rather than sitting side by side. If you need the two-column layout, apply a two-column section format in Word after conversion.

Tables come through as plain text. PDF does not store table structure as a semantic format. Rows of tabular data in a PDF may appear as lines of space-separated text in the Word output. Reformat them as Word tables manually if you need the table structure.

Footnotes and headers may merge with body text. Page headers, footers, and footnotes are positioned outside the main text flow in a PDF but may appear inline with the body text in the Word output. Delete or reformat these as needed.

What to expect from the image output

The image extraction is generally the more reliable of the two operations because the images are stored as complete binary objects in the PDF structure and can be decoded cleanly.

Format will be JPEG or PNG. Most embedded images in PDFs are JPEG. Images that were originally PNG (screenshots, diagrams with flat colors, logos with transparency) may be extracted as PNG or as JPEG depending on how they were embedded when the PDF was created.

Resolution equals the original embedded resolution. If the designer embedded a 300 DPI image, you get a 300 DPI image. If they downsampled images when exporting to PDF (a common setting in many PDF export dialogs), you get the downsampled version.

Small decorative images will also appear. PDFs sometimes embed small graphical elements: bullets, divider lines, background textures, icon graphics. These will appear in the extraction grid alongside the main content images. You can ignore them.

Scanned PDFs produce page images, not content images. A scanned PDF technically contains one image per page (the photo of the printed page), not separate images for each figure on the page. Extracting images from a scanned PDF gives you the full page scans, not individual figures. For scanned documents, the Image to Text OCR tool handles text extraction, and the page scans are already the images.

The privacy advantage of doing this in a browser

Both tools process files entirely in your browser. No file is uploaded to any server at any point.

This matters significantly for documents that typically contain sensitive content: contracts with commercial terms, business reports with internal data, proposals with pricing, ID documents, financial statements.

With server-based conversion services, your file is uploaded, held on their infrastructure for some retention period (usually between 1 and 24 hours), then deleted. The contents of the file pass through their network. For most documents people are converting between PDF and Word, that is an unnecessary and avoidable privacy exposure.

Both of the ToolzPedia tools use JavaScript libraries (PDF.js and docx.js for the Word conversion, PDF.js for the image extraction) that execute entirely within your browser tab. Once the page is loaded, you can disconnect from the internet and both tools will still work.

Quick reference

| What you want | Tool to use | |---------------|-------------| | Editable text from a PDF | PDF to Word | | Original images from a PDF at full resolution | Extract Images from PDF | | Both text and images from a PDF | Use both tools on the same file | | Text from a scanned PDF | Image to Text OCR | | Annotate or fill in a PDF without converting | Edit PDF | | Lock a Word document as a fixed PDF for sharing | Word to PDF |

Related tools on ToolzPedia

• PDF to Word - Extract all text from a PDF as an editable .docx file
• Extract Images from PDF - Save every embedded image from a PDF at full resolution
• Word to PDF - Convert a .docx file to a fixed-layout PDF
• Edit PDF - Add text, highlights, and annotations directly on a PDF
• Image to Text OCR - Extract text from scanned pages and image-based PDFs
• Merge PDF - Combine multiple PDFs into a single file
• Compress PDF - Reduce PDF file size