Word to PDF
Word to PDF without opening Office. Give it a .docx and you get back an A4 document with selectable text and links that still click.
Drag & drop your file here, or
Only .docx is supported. For an old .doc, open it in Word or Google Docs and “Save As” .docx first.
This is what was read out of the .docx — the PDF is laid out from the same content.
How to use
- Drop your .docx onto the Word document field, or click it and browse for the file.
- Read the preview that appears underneath. Whatever shows up there is what the PDF will contain.
- Press Convert to PDF. The status line next to the button goes to Generating PDF while the worker builds the file.
- The PDF saves itself the moment it is ready, named after your document. Nothing else to click.
How the conversion works
Word to PDF usually means opening Word, or handing your document to a site that wants an email address first. Point this at a .docx instead. It reads the file, rebuilds the content, and gives back a PDF where the text is still text: you can select it, search it, and click the links the original had. Headings stay headings. Bullet and numbered lists keep their nesting, tables keep their rows, and any PNG or JPEG picture in the document comes with it.
Pick the file and its content appears on the page straight away. That preview is your check that the document parsed properly, before you commit to anything. Convert to PDF is the only button, and the finished file keeps your document's name: feed it review-draft.docx and review-draft.pdf lands in your downloads.
Being straight about fidelity: the converter reads your document's structure and typesets it fresh. Every page comes out A4, Roboto at 11pt, with 40-point margins, which means line breaks and page breaks fall where that layout puts them rather than where Word put them. Features with no tidy print equivalent drop out on the way: headers and footers, text boxes, multi-column sections, tracked changes. Fine for a CV, a letter, a report, or lecture notes. Wrong tool for a designed flyer.
Good to know
- Only the modern .docx container is read. The tool checks for the PK signature that every .docx begins with and stops when it is missing, which is exactly what a Word 97-2003 .doc will trigger. Open that one in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice and Save As .docx first.
- Layout gets rebuilt rather than preserved. Headers, footers, text boxes, multi-column sections and tracked changes all fall away. Fonts standardise to Roboto and only PNG and JPEG images are embedded, so a picture in any other format is replaced by its alt text in italics.
Frequently asked questions
Will the PDF match my Word layout page for page?
Rarely, and it is worth expecting that. The content is typeset fresh at A4 with 40-point margins, so a paragraph that ended halfway down page two in Word can land higher or lower here. Wording, emphasis, headings, lists, tables and images all come through. Exact pagination does not.
Can I select and copy text out of the finished PDF?
That is the point of doing it this way. Real text runs are written into the file rather than a picture of each page, so Ctrl+F finds words, copy and paste gives you characters back, and every hyperlink from the .docx is still live and rendered in blue.
What happens to pictures in the document?
PNG and JPEG images are embedded and scaled to fit the text column, up to 515 points across and 700 tall. Other formats cannot be embedded, so the picture's alt text appears in italics in its place. If an image matters, re-save it as PNG or JPEG in Word before converting.
It rejected my file as a legacy .doc. What do I do?
Word 97-2003 wrote a completely different container and there is no reader for it here. Open the file in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice, use Save As to make a .docx, then convert that copy. The rejection happens before any parsing starts, so nothing was half-converted.
Is there a page limit?
None is set. Your device's memory is the real ceiling, since the whole document is held while pdfmake assembles the file. Long text documents are comfortable. One packed with full-resolution photographs is what makes an older laptop struggle.
Do headers, footers and page numbers carry over?
They do not. The reader underneath hands over the document body and leaves the header and footer regions out, and there is nowhere to put them back. If the finished PDF needs page numbers, add them afterwards with the PDF page numbers tool.
How are tracked changes and comments handled?
Accept or reject everything in Word before you convert. The document is read as it currently stands, which means tracked insertions can show up as ordinary text and deletions can quietly disappear. Comments are not carried across at all.
Can I convert a batch of documents together?
One at a time. The field takes a single .docx, and choosing another replaces the preview. For a stack of them, convert each one and then join the results with the PDF merge tool.
Does it stamp anything on the output?
No logo, no watermark, no trailing page advertising the converter. What comes out is your document's content, with the layout features listed above missing and nothing added.
Missing something in Word to PDF? Suggest a feature →
Tell someone who needs this.