PDF to LaTeX Converter
Recover a working .tex file when all you have left of a paper, thesis chapter or handout is the PDF. Sections, lists, tables and images come back as LaTeX markup you can compile and edit.
Document Converter
or drop PDF, DOC, DOCX … files here ·
Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes
Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.
150 DPI turns an A4 page into about 1240 × 1754 px. Use 300 for printing.
Convert the whole file or only some pages or slides (PDF and presentation input).
Pages or slides to convert, e.g. 1-3, 5, 8-10.
UTF-8 works for every language. Choose UTF-8 with BOM if Excel or Notepad on Windows shows garbled characters; legacy encodings only for old software.
LF for macOS, Linux and code editors; CRLF for older Windows programs such as classic Notepad.
Comma is standard. Use semicolon for Excel in countries that write decimals with a comma (Germany, France, Brazil).
Excel input with several sheets: convert all of them (one section or file per sheet) or only the first.
How to use this tool
- 1
Upload the PDF
Drop one PDF or up to 20 at once, each up to 95 MB. Scanned pages are read with OCR scanned pages, which is already switched on.
- 2
Leave Formatting on Simple
Convert to is set to LaTeX (.tex) and Formatting to Simple, which writes clean structural markup instead of hard-coded fonts and positions. Use Page range to convert only one chapter.
- 3
Convert and compile
Press Convert to LaTeX (.tex), download the result and open it in Overleaf, TeXstudio or any editor with a TeX distribution such as TeX Live or MiKTeX.
Can you turn a PDF into LaTeX?
Yes. Upload the PDF, keep Convert to on LaTeX (.tex) and you get a compilable .tex file with sections, lists, tables and images rebuilt; complex equations are the part to check by hand.
Why a PDF has no LaTeX inside it
TeX, the typesetting engine Donald Knuth released in 1978, and LaTeX, the macro layer Leslie Lamport built on top of it in the 1980s, both work in one direction: source in, typeset pages out. The current LaTeX version, LaTeX2e, dates from 1994, and every compile ends in a PDF that records where each glyph sits on the page, not which command put it there.
That is why the source of so many documents disappears. A thesis folder lived on a laptop that died, or a co-author kept the .tex and left the lab. When the text needs revising, a resubmission, a chapter turned into a book section, a course handout updated for a new term, retyping forty pages of math is the alternative.
Converting reads the PDF's text layer, groups lines into paragraphs, detects headings from font size and weight, and writes each element back as LaTeX. If you also want a version for the web, PDF to HTML uses the same reading step and writes markup for browsers instead.
What the .tex file looks like after conversion
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\section{Introduction}
First paragraph, rejoined across the PDF's line breaks.
\begin{tabular}{lll}
Sample & Mean & SD \\
\end{tabular}
\includegraphics{figure-1.png}
\end{document}PDF to LaTeX converter or retyping: what each costs you
| UltKit | Retyping by hand | Copy and paste from a PDF viewer | |
|---|---|---|---|
Headings become \section and \subsection | yes | yes | no |
| Lines rejoined into real paragraphs | yes | yes | no |
Tables rebuilt as tabular | yes | yes | no |
| Characters such as %, & and _ escaped | yes | If you remember | no |
| Display equations as editable math | Check by hand | yes | no |
| Ligatures such as fi and fl split back into letters | yes | yes | Often not |
Portable Document Format
PDF was created by Adobe in 1993 and became the open ISO 32000 standard in 2008. It fixes text, fonts, images and layout so a document looks the same on every screen and printer. PDFs can contain forms, signatures, links, attachments and searchable text, and the PDF/A variant is used for long-term archiving. The fixed layout makes PDFs hard to edit, and scanned PDFs contain only images unless OCR is applied. Every browser and operating system can open them.
- Compression
- –
- Transparency
- Yes
- Animation
- No
- Introduced
- 1993 · Adobe
TEX
TeX / LaTeX source
A .tex file is the source code of a TeX or LaTeX document. TeX was created by Donald Knuth in 1978, and LaTeX, a set of macros built on top of it by Leslie Lamport, is the standard for academic papers in mathematics, physics and computer science. Authors write plain text with commands for structure and equations, and a compiler produces a precisely typeset PDF. It produces excellent typography and maths, but has a steep learning curve and needs a TeX distribution or an online editor such as Overleaf to build.
- Compression
- –
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 1978 · Donald Knuth (TeX); Leslie Lamport (LaTeX)
People convert PDF to LaTeX when a typeset document has to be edited again and its source is gone: a lost thesis folder, an old paper being revised for a journal, or lecture notes a new instructor wants to reuse.
Cleaning up converted LaTeX before you compile
| Do | Don't |
|---|---|
| Compile once straight away and fix the first error the log reports; later errors often vanish with it. | Do not expect \label and \ref cross-references; numbers arrive as typed text. |
Search for \textbf lines standing alone and turn real headings into \section. | Do not switch Formatting to Keep all for a journal template; fixed fonts fight the class file. |
| Move repeated formatting into your own macros once the text is stable. | Do not delete the image files that came with the .tex; the \includegraphics lines point at them. |
| Rebuild the bibliography in a .bib file if the document will keep changing. | Do not submit the result to arXiv untested; arXiv recompiles your source on its own servers. |
arXiv asks for the TeX source of any paper produced with TeX rather than a PDF, which is one of the most common reasons people end up here after losing a folder. Converted source is accepted like any other, as long as it compiles. If your target is a Word-based journal instead, PDF to Word gives you a DOCX with the same structure, and the guide on converting PDF to Word explains how to judge a conversion before you edit it.
PDF to LaTeX: equations, figures and citations
Can I get the original .tex back from a PDF that was made with LaTeX?
Not the original file. Compiling throws away your macros, comments, labels and the bibliography database, so the PDF only holds the typeset result. The converter rebuilds equivalent markup from that result, which is a new source rather than the author's own.
Why do some equations come out as plain text or images?
A PDF draws math as individually placed glyphs, with no record of which symbol is a superscript or where a fraction starts. Simple inline math usually comes back fine; multi-line displays and matrices are the parts to check and retype in align or pmatrix environments.
Which LaTeX editor should I open the result in?
Overleaf runs in the browser and needs no installation, which makes it the quickest way to compile a converted file. On your own computer, TeXstudio or VS Code with LaTeX Workshop on top of TeX Live or MiKTeX gives the same result offline.
What happens to the figures in my PDF?
With Include images on, pictures are saved as separate files and referenced from the .tex with \includegraphics, so download the whole result and keep the folder structure.
Will my citations and reference list still work?
The reference list arrives as ordinary text in a list, not as BibTeX entries, because the PDF never contained the .bib file.
