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Documentation Index

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Most issues with pdf2wordx fall into one of four categories: problems installing the package, failures when launching the GUI window, errors that occur during file conversion, and quality concerns about the generated .docx output. The sections below cover the most frequently encountered problems in each category along with recommended fixes.

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Installation Issues

pdf2wordx requires Python 3.8 through 3.12. If your system has multiple Python versions installed, pip may be pointing to an unsupported version.Steps to resolve:
1

Check your Python version

python --version
The output must be between 3.8.x and 3.12.x.
2

Try pip3 explicitly

pip3 install pdf2wordx
3

Use the Python module form

python3 -m pip install pdf2wordx
4

Use a virtual environment

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install pdf2wordx
pip installs console scripts into a bin (Linux/macOS) or Scripts (Windows) directory. If that directory is not on your system PATH, the pdf2wordx command will not be found.Steps to resolve:
1

Find the pip scripts directory

python -m site --user-base
Append /bin (Linux/macOS) or \Scripts (Windows) to that path.
2

Add the scripts directory to PATH

Linux/macOS — add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
Windows — add the Scripts folder to your user environment variables via System Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables.
3

Reload your shell

source ~/.bashrc
Then try pdf2wordx again.

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GUI Launch Issues

Tkinter is part of the Python standard library but is shipped as a separate OS package on many Linux distributions. It must be installed at the system level — it cannot be installed via pip.Fix by operating system:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-tk
After installing, verify Tkinter is available:
python -m tkinter
A small test window should open.
If the process exits immediately without showing a window or displaying an error message, check the application log file for details.When running from source, the log is written to:
./src/pdf2wordx/log.log
relative to the project root. Open that file in any text editor to find the exception that was caught and recorded by chromologger.Common causes include a missing favicon.ico (the app expects ./src/pdf2wordx/favicon.ico), a Python version outside the supported range, or a corrupt or incomplete installation. If the log file does not exist or is empty, try running the entry module directly to see any uncaught traceback:
python ./src/pdf2wordx/_pdf2wordx.py

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Conversion Errors

This dialog is shown when an exception is raised inside Funcs._convertFile(). The underlying cause is passed to logger.log_e(e) and written to log.log.Common causes:
  • The PDF is password-protected or encrypted — pdf2docx cannot open encrypted PDFs without the password.
  • The PDF is corrupted — try opening it in a PDF viewer to confirm it is valid.
  • The PDF uses a format or feature not supported by pdf2docx (e.g., certain PDF/A variants or heavily compressed streams).
Steps to resolve:
1

Check the log file

Open ./src/pdf2wordx/log.log to read the exact exception message.
2

Test with a different PDF

Try converting a simple, unencrypted PDF to determine whether the problem is file-specific.
3

Remove PDF encryption

If the PDF is password-protected, use a PDF editor to remove the password before converting.
This error appears when the file picker dialog is dismissed without selecting a file, or when the selected file cannot be processed by filedialog.askopenfilename().Fix: Click Abrir Archivo (Open File) again and select a valid .pdf file. Make sure you do not press Cancel in the file picker.
This error appears when the directory picker dialog is closed without selecting a folder, or when the selected path string cannot be processed.Fix: Click Elegir Directorio (Choose Directory) again and select a valid output folder. Ensure the folder exists and that you have write permissions for it.

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Output Quality Issues

PDF-to-Word conversion is inherently imperfect. PDFs store content as positioned elements with embedded fonts, which do not map cleanly to the paragraph-and-style model of a Word document. Complex layouts, non-standard encodings, transparency effects, or unusual font embedding can all cause rendering artifacts in the output.This is a known limitation documented in the pdf2wordx README:
“There may be errors in the content of the DOCX (strange colors, incoherent texts, and even content loss) due to the original content of the PDF (which could be complicated to replicate).”
Workarounds:
  • Try converting a simpler or text-only PDF to verify the converter is working.
  • Open the .docx in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice and manually correct formatting after conversion.
  • If the source PDF was generated from a Word document, consider using the original .docx file instead of reconverting.
PDFs that contain many high-resolution images, complex vector graphics, or a large number of pages will produce correspondingly large .docx files after conversion. pdf2wordx embeds image data from the PDF directly into the Word document.This is expected behavior, as noted in the README:
“docx files in this case can be large (MB)”
Workarounds:
  • Compress the source PDF before converting (reduce image resolution or re-export from the source application at a lower quality setting).
  • Use Word’s Compress Pictures feature on the output document after conversion.
Certain PDF content types are not supported by the underlying pdf2docx library and will be silently omitted from the output:
  • Interactive forms (AcroForms, XFA forms)
  • Annotations and comments
  • Digital signatures
  • Embedded multimedia (audio, video)
  • JavaScript actions
Only convertible text and image content is written to the .docx file.
If none of the solutions above resolve your issue, open a bug report at https://github.com/dev2forge/pdf2wordx/issues. Include the full error message from log.log, your Python version (python --version), your operating system, and the pdf2wordx version (pip show pdf2wordx).

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