As a non-expert user of Large Language Models (LLMs), I was blown away by Claude’s performance in a recent project. My goal was to convert a 19-page PDF document into a editable MS Word file, but the original text was in scanned form and not editable. I tried four different LLMs: DeepSeek, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude, with the same prompt: ‘Convert this PDF into MS Word.’
DeepSeek did a decent job of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and creating a text document that retained the original format, but I had to copy and paste it into MS Word. Gemini completely failed, producing a text document with many mistakes and no formatting. ChatGPT was even worse, displaying a red error message saying ‘No text could be extracted from this file.’
Claude, however, was the clear winner. It went through multiple processes, explaining each step and adapting its approach when necessary. The final result was a clean MS Word document that I could download with just one click. While the formatting wasn’t perfect, it was significantly better than the other options. I was impressed by Claude’s ability to learn and adapt, even admitting when its initial approach wasn’t working.
This experience has convinced me to give Claude another try in the future, especially for tasks that require a combination of text recognition and formatting. It’s clear that Claude is a powerful tool that can save time and effort in various projects.
If you’re looking for a reliable LLM for text conversion tasks, I highly recommend giving Claude a try. You might be surprised by its capabilities!