How do you change active voice to passive voice?

Three moves. Make the object of the active sentence the new subject. Change the verb to the matching form of be plus the past participle. Put the old subject after “by,” or leave it out. “The adjuster denied the claim” becomes “The claim was denied by the adjuster.”

Which tense of "be" do I use?

The same tense the active verb had. Denied (simple past) → was denied; denies (present) → is denied; has denied (present perfect) → has been denied; will deny → will be denied; is denying → is being denied. The converter does this for you.

Can every active sentence be made passive?

No. Only sentences with a transitive verb — a verb that takes an object — have a passive form. “She arrived,” “He slept” and “They disagreed” cannot be turned around because nothing receives the action.

Why would anyone convert to passive on purpose?

To put the receiver first when it is the topic (“Penicillin was discovered in 1928”), to leave out a doer who is unknown or irrelevant, to be tactful (“Your request was not approved”), or to keep the same subject across consecutive sentences. See when to use passive voice.

Active to passive voice converter

Enter the three parts of an active sentence — who does it, what they do, and what they do it to — pick a tense, and get the passive form built correctly. Useful for grammar practice and for the rare cases where the passive is the better sentence.

Fill in the three parts and choose Convert.

The three steps

Find the object of the active sentence — the thing the verb acts on. In “The board approved the budget,” the object is the budget.
Move it to the front and rewrite the verb as be + past participle in the same tense: the budget was approved.
Decide what to do with the old subject. Keep it after “by” if it matters (“…by the board”) or drop it if it does not.

Past participles that trip people up

Regular verbs take -ed (approved, denied, signed). Irregular ones do not, and the past participle is often different from the simple past: write → wrote → written; take → took → taken; go → went → gone; choose → chose → chosen; drive → drove → driven; begin → began → begun. The passive always uses the participle, never the simple past: “the letter was written,” not “the letter was wrote.” The converter’s verb field accepts the base form and supplies the participle.

Verbs with two objects

Some verbs take two objects: “The company gave the employees a bonus.” Either object can become the passive subject: “The employees were given a bonus” or “A bonus was given to the employees.” The first version is more common in English because the person usually matters more than the thing.

Sentences that cannot be made passive

Intransitive verbs have no object, so nothing can receive the action: arrive, sleep, happen, exist, die, laugh, go, come. Linking verbs (be, seem, become, appear) describe rather than act. And some transitive verbs resist the passive in practice: “The suit fits him” does not become “He is fitted by the suit.” If the converter’s output sounds wrong, the verb may be one of these.

Questions

How do you change active voice to passive voice?: Three moves. Make the object of the active sentence the new subject. Change the verb to the matching form of be plus the past participle. Put the old subject after “by,” or leave it out. “The adjuster denied the claim” becomes “The claim was denied by the adjuster.”
Which tense of "be" do I use?: The same tense the active verb had. Denied (simple past) → was denied; denies (present) → is denied; has denied (present perfect) → has been denied; will deny → will be denied; is denying → is being denied. The converter does this for you.
Can every active sentence be made passive?: No. Only sentences with a transitive verb — a verb that takes an object — have a passive form. “She arrived,” “He slept” and “They disagreed” cannot be turned around because nothing receives the action.
Why would anyone convert to passive on purpose?: To put the receiver first when it is the topic (“Penicillin was discovered in 1928”), to leave out a doer who is unknown or irrelevant, to be tactful (“Your request was not approved”), or to keep the same subject across consecutive sentences. See when to use passive voice.