How can I open PDF files in LibreOffice Writer rather than Draw?

LibreOffice does not have the native capability to open or import random PDF files into a Writer document (and there are no extensions available that add this). As you noted, it can import into Draw and then save as ODT, but the results leave a lot to be desired. Some years ago, there was a PDF Importer extension, and that was included by default starting around version 4; it's what now lets you open a PDF in Draw and handles hybrid PDFs.

If you are creating the PDF yourself, you can export it from Writer as a "hybrid" PDF. This embeds an ODT copy of the document within the PDF. In that case, the PDF can be opened and edited in Writer and all of the formatting is preserved. Hybrid PDFs are described here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/Writer/PDF_Hybrid.

Otherwise, there are third-party applications and web services that will convert the PDF to ODT, which you can then open in Writer. Here are a few:

• Online2PDF, CloudConvert, Zamzar, and file-converter-online all convert to and from PDF for a range of formats, including ODT.

• Convertio also includes the ability to run OCR on a PDF image file to recover the document and formatting.

• Sejda and Smallpdf don't convert to ODT, but they can convert to MS Office formats, which LibreOffice can open and use.

I have not used all of these services and it's been ages since I used any of them, so I can't advise you on how well any of the services perform. I suspect that different services may do better on documents with different characteristics, so you might want to experiment with several services to see which does the best job on your document.

There are also some downloadable conversion applications, some free, some free to try on a limited basis, and some paid. I haven't used any so I can't offer advice, but the options are easily found with a Google search.

Well, apparently - you can do so just fine! LibreOffice has three separate input filters for PDFs, which open them in LO Writer, Impress and Draw, respectively. When you open a PDF file, you just have to make sure and scroll down the list of possible filters and choose the right one.

I've recently opened this LibreOffice bug for having each app default to using its own PDF import filter.