How to reclaim white space in a converted microsoft word document?

Question

After converting a document from pdf to docx I find that it's very difficult to edit anything without damaging the layout because I can't write over the existing white space.

Like for example:

{Sentence}{whitespace}{right edge of page}

If I try to add anything to that sentence it will ignore the existing whitespace even if it's more than half the width of the page and immediately jump to the next line.

So if I have:

{aaa bbb}{whitespace}{right edge of page}

and want to add a "z" between a and b this will happen:

{aaa z}{whitespace}{right edge of page}

{bbb}

How can I write over that white space? How do I "unlock" it?

Answer 1

I'm not sure what exactly is going on with your white space problem, but I've found that when I've converted pdfs to docx the conversion often introduces "stray" text boxes that also often have a wrapping style that forces text breaks. So check that there aren't any stray "invisible" text boxes in the area you're dealing with.