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Like most people here, my resume/CV is in LaTeX, but there are always these annoying companies (or more often, recruiters) who will only look at resumes in Microsoft Word format. How can I translate my beautiful LaTeX document into .doc without making it look horrible?

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  • 5
    I thought PDF was the "read-everywhere" format of choice?
    – You
    Dec 6, 2013 at 21:30
  • Larry, did you find smth among online latex editors during your research?
    – Suncatcher
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:43

7 Answers 7

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There is a commercial product called GrindEQ which can also convert math. Another option is to import your LaTeX into LyX, and output as a Word document.

Aside from the free solution using LyX, you can use LaTeX2RTF, which works okay. Also latex2doc which is a bit more sophisticated. Lastly, there is pandoc which is a more universal converter.

Your mileage may vary, which is why I am inundating you with choices.

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37

Print or compile it to an image, then paste it in a word file. Then copy and paste the source and/or textual form, and paste it in the document invisible under the image.

This does 3 things:

  1. Works independent of MS Word version. Pasting an image in a word file is not a new feature
  2. Includes the text in the document. Many companies want this so they can do a textual search for keywords (to narrow down or sift resumes)
  3. Sticks it to the Word users (makes me smile inside)

Then I usually go find a different company that likes computer nerds.

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    This 'solution' is hilarious. (In a good way!) I think that headhunters ask for .doc rather than .pdf because they want to be able to make little changes to your resume themselves, so will not really appreciate this method.
    – Larry Wang
    Jul 26, 2010 at 19:55
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    +1 for sticking it to the Word users =) Seriously, if any company asked for my resume in .doc/x format, I'd refuse. If they really want to edit the text, they can cut-and-paste the text from a pdf.
    – Tomas Aschan
    Aug 6, 2010 at 13:26
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The tug.org page has a significant list here. This list is in two parts, including both LaTeX to 'PC textprocessors' and 'PC textprocessors' to LaTeX, you want to look at the former.

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I've had mixed experiences with latex2rtf – it generally manages to produce something, but often misses important bits of structure.

I've had most consistent success with pandoc (as one of the other answers notes). I compared a couple of alternative routes, and its converter to Open Office seemed more reliable than its converter direct to Word. Thus convert with

% pandoc -r latex -w odt -o file.odt file.tex

Then open file.odt with OpenOffice and save it as Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc).

In the cases I tried, that managed to preserve quite a lot of document structure, emphases, and footnotes. The documents in question used almost no maths, but converting that would be probably unreasonable.

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Adobe Acrobat XI Pro provides "pdf -> word" feature that is capable of neatly and accurately convert the pdf file to word. It can successfully convert figures, tables, mathematical equations, and references from pdf to "word.docx". I converted my LaTeX file to pdf and then converted to word. Compared to other applications and tools, this is fantastically easy and accurate. Adobe provides 1 month free trial and you can do convert your file without limit. Download it from here

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  • I've seen that too, but would be concerned about "security": Is my assumption correct, that you upload your pdf to an Adobe server (which does the conversion server-side) and then download your *.docx ?
    – nutty about natty
    Jul 16, 2013 at 8:29
  • BTW, I've seen it being advertized/offered in Reader (not in Pro) ...
    – nutty about natty
    Jul 16, 2013 at 8:30
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    @nuttyaboutnatty: Security is a common issue with all applications that we obtain from third party no matter Adobe or something else. Being online won't indicate high security risk. It wants you create an account but conversion is all local nothing needs to be uploaded to the Adobe website.
    – Espanta
    Jul 17, 2013 at 2:50
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    Regarding product, as the Adobe Reader name indicates, it is more for reading not much manipulating documents and may not be available in reader version. I have just tried Reader, it has online option for word conversion. But Pro has local conversion of the file not only to .doc but also to .docx (more features and more adequate) and many other formats like HTML and XML.
    – Espanta
    Jul 17, 2013 at 3:04
  • @nuttyaboutnatty No. Acrobat doesn't operate online. It is an application that runs on your local workstation. It only uses online access for updating and licensing.
    – Tripp Kinetics
    Feb 11, 2021 at 17:28
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If you don't mind a third party user accessing your information (particularly something as sensitive as a CV), I have found converting a pdf to word to be an effective way of managing this. For example one free service is convertpdftoword. Although it makes the word document quite large, I've found that it usually preserves the formatting almost perfectly.

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pandoc can convert between many formats, notably LaTeX and Microsoft Word.

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