Convert Word to PDF

To convert a Word document to PDF, press Select Word file and pick your .docx or .doc, then press Convert to PDF and download the result. It keeps your document's name, so report.docx comes back as report.pdf.

A PDF looks the same on every device and resists editing, so the layout you checked is the layout everyone sees. That is why finished documents, applications and anything for print are usually sent this way. Our guide to when to send an .odt, a Word file or a PDF puts it simply: if nobody asked for a format and the document is final, send a PDF.

Sometimes that is not what was asked for. From the same document you can convert Word to ODT for an office that wants OpenDocument, save Word as HTML to put it on a web page, pull out just the text to paste it somewhere else, or make a TIFF for archiving, with every page in one picture file.

Until 2007, Word saved documents as .doc, and those files still turn up in old archives and email attachments. To convert DOC to PDF, use the same three steps as for DOCX to PDF, with nothing to resave first. In our test, a .doc gave the same two pages as the newer file it was made from. If the file is an .odt from LibreOffice instead, convert ODT to PDF the same way.

A document someone else wrote may use fonts our server does not have. The common Microsoft fonts have stand-ins of the same width, listed under Good to know above, so their text takes the same room. A font with no stand-in is drawn in a different one, which can change the look and move a line or page break. If the look matters, page through the result before you send it.

Going from Microsoft Word to PDF here needs nothing installed. The document is opened and saved as a PDF on our server, so a browser is all you need to save Word as PDF on a computer without Office, or on one you have borrowed. In our tests the result kept:

• the page size: an A4 document gives A4 pages, and a US Letter one gives US Letter pages;
• headers and footers on every page, with the page numbers filled in;
• pictures and headings, where they were in the document;
• the words as real text, so you can search, select and copy them;
• its fonts, saved inside the file, so it looks the same on any device that opens it.

A report full of photos makes a large file; Compress PDF can shrink it afterwards by lowering the resolution of the pictures.

Keep the document you started from. A PDF is made for reading, not editing, and the original is always the cleanest place to make a change. If the PDF is all you have, you can convert a PDF back to Word, but check the result before you rely on it: that page rebuilds your document from what the PDF shows, so it is a close copy rather than your original file. If it holds tables, the guide on how to convert PDF to Word with tables lists what to check.