About PDF Bolt

PDF Bolt is an independent project offering simple PDF tools — PDF to Word, Merge PDF and Split PDF — that work entirely inside your browser, so your documents never leave your device.

Who's behind it

PDF Bolt is built and maintained by Sergio as an independent project. It isn't affiliated with Adobe, Microsoft or any other software company mentioned in our guides, and we don't earn commissions for recommending other products.

Why we built it

Most free PDF websites work by uploading your file to their servers. That's fine for a restaurant menu, but people routinely run contracts, payslips and ID scans through these tools. We wanted tools that do the everyday jobs without ever receiving your files, with no account and no email required.

How the tools work

  • When you use a tool, your browser loads the processing code from this site — including open-source libraries such as pdf.js and pdf-lib — and runs it locally. Your PDF is read from your device, processed in memory and saved back to your device.
  • Merge and Split copy pages from the original files as they are, without converting them to images, so quality and selectable text are preserved.
  • PDF to Word extracts the text and builds two .docx files: a Basic version with one paragraph per line, and an Enhanced version that rebuilds paragraphs, detects headings and aligns simple columns.

What the tools can't do

  • They can't read scanned (image-only) PDFs, because there's no text inside to extract. Our guide to scanned PDFs and OCR explains the alternatives.
  • PDF to Word doesn't rebuild tables, images or exact layouts; see why PDF conversions lose formatting.
  • Password-protected PDFs need to be unlocked on your device first.
  • Very large files are limited by your device's memory.

How we write our guides

Our guides explain how to get common PDF jobs done with the tools people already have — Word, Google Docs, Preview, Edge, LibreOffice — as well as ours. We base the steps on each app's current features, note when something depends on the app or operating system version, and update each guide when things change; the last update date is shown at the top of every guide.

How the site is funded

PDF Bolt is free to use and supported by ads served by Google AdSense on some pages. You never need to view or click an ad to use a tool or download a file. You can read how advertising cookies are handled in our privacy policy.

Feedback

If a tool doesn't handle one of your PDFs correctly, or a guide is out of date, please let us know through our contact page.