PDF Conversion Issues

How to Fix Gibberish Characters After PDF Conversion

Maira Mehtab Oct 23, 2026 868 views

Question details

The user needs to resolve an issue where converting a PDF file results in unreadable, nonsense, or gibberish characters.

How to Fix Gibberish Characters After PDF Conversion

Product: PDF Converter
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Converting a PDF document to an editable format such as Microsoft Word or Excel.
Observed behavior: The resulting converted file contains gibberish or nonsense characters instead of the original, readable text.

Before you start

Determine if your original PDF contains selectable text or is a scanned image. You can test this by trying to highlight individual words in a standard PDF reader.

Solution 1Recommended

Enable OCR for Scanned PDF Documents

If the PDF is a scanned image rather than a text-based document, standard conversion will fail. You must use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract the text properly.

Scanned PDFs are essentially photographs of text. Without OCR, conversion software attempts to map non-existent text layers, which often results in gibberish symbols or blank pages.

Open your PDF converter

Launch your PDF conversion software (such as Adobe Export PDF or WPS Office) and open the scanned PDF file.

Select the OCR function

Look for the 'OCR' or 'Recognize Text' option in the conversion settings before initializing the process.

Set the document language

Ensure you select the correct source language of the document, as the OCR engine relies on this to accurately recognize characters.

Convert the file

Proceed with converting the file to Word or Excel. The OCR engine will now translate the images into readable text.

Tip: For best OCR results, ensure the original scanned PDF has a high resolution (at least 300 DPI) and clear contrast.

Solution 2

Bypass Font Encoding Issues Using Print to PDF

If the PDF has selectable text but still converts to gibberish, it may have unusual text mapping, embedded fonts, or damaged encoding. 'Flattening' the file can sometimes resolve this.

Effortless PDF Conversion

Convert PDFs Accurately with WPS Office

WPS Office features a powerful built-in PDF toolkit with advanced OCR technology, ensuring high-quality conversions from PDF to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint without gibberish or formatting loss.

1. Open WPS Office: Launch WPS Office and click on the 'PDF' tab from the home screen.
2. Choose your conversion tool: Click on 'PDF to Word', 'PDF to Excel', or the relevant format from the top toolbar and select your file.
3. Enable OCR: If you are converting a scanned file, check the 'OCR' option in the conversion prompt to ensure accurate text extraction.
4. Convert and save: Click the 'Convert' button. Your file will quickly be converted into a clean, editable document free of gibberish characters.

Accurately converts scanned PDFs using advanced built-in OCR technology.Highly compatible with Microsoft Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx).Bypasses common font encoding errors to ensure clean, readable text.Lightweight, fast, and preserves your original document layout.

microsoft office alternative - wps office

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my converted Word document look like a bunch of symbols?

This usually happens when the original PDF uses custom or embedded fonts that are not mapped correctly to standard text, or if the PDF is a scanned document that was converted without utilizing OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology.

Do I need special software to convert scanned PDFs?

Yes. Standard PDF converters cannot read text from images. You need a PDF converter equipped with an OCR engine, which scans the image and turns the visual shapes into editable, readable text.

How can I tell if my PDF is a scanned image or text-based?

Open the PDF and try to highlight a single word with your mouse cursor. If you can only select the entire page as one large block, it is a scanned image. If you can highlight individual letters or words, it is text-based.

Will changing the target output format fix the gibberish issue?

Sometimes. If a PDF-to-Word conversion fails due to complex text mapping, trying to convert it to plain text (.txt) might bypass complex font encoding issues, providing you with readable text that you can later copy into Word.

PDF Troubleshooting