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What browser PDF conversion can and cannot do

StackPDF rebuilds Word, Excel, and HTML from text heuristics, and HTML to PDF via screenshots. That is enough for notes. It is not iLovePDF for designed files.

Cloud converters (iLovePDF, Adobe online, and similar) send the file to a server farm that runs heavier layout engines. StackPDF never does that. The trade-off is fidelity: we rebuild from what pdf.js can read in the tab.

PDF → Word, Excel, HTML

These tools extract text runs, guess headings from font size, detect simple lists, and split obvious tables by horizontal gaps. The download is a real .docx / .xlsx / .html file — not a renamed PDF. What they will not preserve: exact page layout, floating figures, multi-column magazines, scanned pages, or form fields.

  • Good for: meeting notes, reports that are mostly paragraphs, a simple invoice table.
  • Weak for: designed brochures, complex spreadsheets drawn as lines, anything that is really an image.
  • Scans: run OCR PDF first, then convert. Otherwise you get an empty document.

HTML → PDF

HTML to PDF paints the page with html2canvas and places those bitmaps into a PDF. It is not a print-CSS engine. Flex/grid, webfonts, and modern color functions can shift. Use it for a letter or a simple article, not for pixel-perfect invoices.

Word → PDF

Word to PDF reads .docx (not legacy .doc), keeps tables and inlined images, and approximates Word’s page size and margins. Tracked changes, SmartArt, and text boxes will not survive 1:1.

Open PDF to Word

Private text-first conversion. Pair with OCR for scans.

Open PDF to Word

Try these tools

PDF to Word

Rebuild a .docx from extracted text — fine for notes, not a layout clone.

Word to PDF

Convert Word documents to PDF privately.

PDF to Excel

Export extracted text and simple gap-split tables to Excel.

HTML to PDF

Capture HTML as bitmap pages (html2canvas), not print CSS.

OCR PDF

Turn scanned PDFs into searchable, selectable text.

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