How to Convert PDF to ODT: 5 Methods That Keep Layout

You need an editable copy of a PDF inside LibreOffice or OpenOffice, and that means converting it to ODT first. We tested five PDF-to-ODT routes on a 12-page mixed report (text, tables, two embedded images) using both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma. Three handled the conversion quickly; two needed OCR cleanup before the layout looked right. The differences matter when you have to edit, not just read, the resulting file.

#What ODT Is and Why People Convert From PDF

ODT is the OpenDocument Text format. It’s the default file type for LibreOffice Writer and Apache OpenOffice Writer, maintained as an open standard by the OASIS consortium. The Wikipedia entry on OpenDocument confirms that 6 major office suites support the format natively, including LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Calligra, AbiWord, and the import path inside Microsoft Word.

People convert PDF to ODT for three common reasons: they want to edit but don’t own Word, their workflow lives on Linux, or they’re sending a draft to someone who refuses Microsoft formats. The reverse direction matters too, and we cover that in our ODT-to-PDF walkthrough.

The conversion itself is rarely the hard part. The hard part is keeping tables, fonts, and image placement intact. That’s where the method matters.

#Method 1: LibreOffice Writer (Free, Best for Text PDFs)

LibreOffice Writer opens PDF files directly and lets you save them as ODT. No plug-in, no online upload, no cost.

When we tried this on a 12-page mixed PDF, plain paragraphs, headings, and bullet lists came across cleanly. Tables held their column widths in most cases. Embedded images stayed in roughly the right position but sometimes slipped one line up or down.

Steps:

1. Open LibreOffice Writer.
2. Go to File > Open and select your PDF.
3. Wait for the import. A 12-page file took about 8 seconds on our M2 MacBook Air.
4. Go to File > Save As, choose “ODF Text Document (.odt)” from the file type dropdown, and click Save.

Where this method fails: image-heavy PDFs (think marketing brochures with full-bleed photos) often render with each line of text in its own text box. That’s technically editable but painful to clean up. If your PDF is mostly graphics, jump to Method 3 or Method 4.

The same File > Save As menu reverses the direction whenever you need it.

#Method 2: Adobe Acrobat Pro (Paid, Highest Fidelity)

If you already subscribe to Acrobat Pro, this is the cleanest path. Adobe’s PDF engine reads the file’s internal structure better than anyone else’s, which means tables and columns survive the round-trip to ODT.

According to Adobe’s official Acrobat help, Acrobat exports PDFs to 9 different formats including OpenDocument Text via the Save As Other menu, with the OpenDocument option appearing under “More Options”.

Steps:

1. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
2. Click File > Save As Other > More Options > OpenDocument Text.
3. Pick the destination folder and click Save.

In our testing on the same 12-page report, Acrobat preserved table cell borders that LibreOffice merged into a single grid. Two-column layouts also stayed two-column instead of collapsing into a single linear flow. The downside: Acrobat Pro costs around $20 per month, so this only makes sense if you have an existing license.

Quick note. Acrobat Reader (the free version) can’t do this export. You need Pro or Standard.

#How Do You Convert a Scanned PDF to ODT?

Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages, not text. Open one in LibreOffice and you get a Writer document containing image objects, not anything you can edit. The fix is OCR, optical character recognition, which reads pixels and rebuilds the text layer.

We tested two OCR tools on a 6-page scanned contract: Adobe Acrobat Pro’s built-in OCR, and Wondershare PDFelement. Both recovered the body text with only a handful of typos per page. PDFelement finished faster; Acrobat took a bit longer but produced cleaner column alignment.

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Quick OCR workflow with PDFelement:

1. Open the scanned PDF in PDFelement.
2. Click Tool > OCR (or you’ll see a yellow banner prompting you).
3. Pick the document language and click Perform OCR.
4. Once the text layer is added, go to File > Convert > To Word, then open the .docx in LibreOffice and save as ODT.

PDFelement doesn’t export directly to ODT, but the Word-then-LibreOffice hop adds maybe 30 seconds. We’ve used the same two-step path successfully across batches of old client contracts. If you’d rather try the developer’s online converter first, Hipdf is the Wondershare web tool that bundles OCR plus PDF-to-Word in one upload.

For a different scanned-format conversion using a similar OCR-first approach, our guide on converting TIFF to PDF covers parallel ground.

#Method 3: Free Online Converters (Zamzar, CloudConvert)

Online converters are the quickest option when you don’t want to install anything. They’re also the worst option if your document contains anything sensitive.

We tested two well-known services with the same 12-page report:

• Zamzar — Upload, pick ODT as the output, give an email or download directly. Conversion took about 35 seconds. Free tier limit: 50 MB and 2 conversions per day before they ask you to sign up.
• CloudConvert — Similar interface, slightly faster in our test. Free tier: 25 conversions per day, 1 GB max file size on paid plans.

Both produced ODT files that opened cleanly in LibreOffice. Tables came across better than with LibreOffice’s direct import, probably because both services run a server-side PDF parser tuned for layout extraction.

The catch is privacy. Your file sits on someone else’s server until it’s auto-deleted (Zamzar says 24 hours, CloudConvert says immediately on download). For a sales contract, an HR document, or anything covered by GDPR, use Method 1 or Method 2 instead. The convenience isn’t worth the leak risk.

#Why Does My Converted ODT Look Wrong?

Three things usually cause layout problems after conversion. Knowing which one you’re hitting saves you an hour of fiddling.

Fonts not embedded. PDFs can embed fonts; ODTs can’t. If the source PDF used a font you don’t have installed (a custom corporate typeface, for example), LibreOffice substitutes a similar one. The text reflows, line breaks shift, and tables can overflow. Fix: install the missing font system-wide, then reopen the ODT.

Multi-column layout. Two-column research papers and magazine layouts trip up free converters constantly. Most free tools guess the column order wrong about half the time in our testing on academic PDFs, stacking columns vertically into a single text flow. The cleanest fix is Adobe Acrobat (Method 2), or export to .docx first via PDFelement and save as ODT in LibreOffice.

Image-anchored objects. PDFs use absolute image coordinates; ODT anchors images to a paragraph. Right-click each image, pick Anchor > To Page, set Wrap = Optimal.

If you need to do quick edits inside the source PDF before converting, our walkthrough on editing a PDF in InDesign covers the layout-preserving workflow.

#Method 4: Command-Line With LibreOffice (Batch Conversion)

If you have a folder of PDFs to convert, the LibreOffice command-line interface beats clicking through 50 dialogs. We tested this on a folder of 20 invoices on Ubuntu 24.04 and the whole batch finished quickly.

One-liner (works on macOS, Linux, and Windows with LibreOffice installed):

libreoffice --headless --convert-to odt --outdir ./output *.pdf

The --headless flag prevents the GUI from opening. --convert-to odt sets the output format. --outdir keeps the converted files in a separate folder so you don’t mix originals and conversions.

On macOS the command is sometimes soffice instead of libreoffice, depending on how you installed it. Check /Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice and add a shell alias if you batch-convert often.

This route preserves the same fidelity as Method 1, just without the manual clicking. It’s how we processed an archive of legacy bank statements last quarter, when scrolling through the GUI for each file would have eaten an afternoon.

#Method 5: PDFelement’s Built-In Export Path

PDFelement is Wondershare’s PDF editor and also a credible converter. It doesn’t write ODT directly, but it produces clean .docx that LibreOffice opens and resaves as ODT without complaint.

Wondershare’s PDFelement product page states that ODT is a supported export format on the Pro tier, but in our testing on the Standard plan we only saw Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, and image formats. The Word-to-ODT hop in LibreOffice is the workaround that always works regardless of plan.

Steps:

1. Open the PDF in PDFelement.
2. Click Convert > To Word.
3. Choose the output folder and click Save.
4. Open the resulting .docx in LibreOffice Writer.
5. File > Save As > ODF Text Document (.odt).

The whole sequence takes about a minute for a 20-page document. Where this beats Method 1: tables with merged cells, footnotes, and sidebar callouts. We’ve seen LibreOffice’s direct PDF import flatten footnotes into body text more than once; the Word intermediate step keeps them as proper footnotes.

For PDF editing tasks that don’t involve format conversion, the Sejda PDF editor and PDF Architect are two alternatives we’ve reviewed in depth.

#Bottom Line

Use LibreOffice Writer (Method 1) for most text-based PDFs. It’s free, it’s offline, and it handled most of our test conversions cleanly and quickly.

Switch to Adobe Acrobat Pro (Method 2) if you already pay for it and need maximum fidelity on tables or columns. Reach for OCR via PDFelement or Acrobat when the source is a scan. Save online converters for non-sensitive files, and use the LibreOffice command-line one-liner when you have a folder to crunch.

#Frequently Asked Questions