File4Edit

Convert Word to PDF

A free Word to PDF converter that runs in your browser, with nothing to upload. It re-typesets the text with the standard PDF fonts, so reading order, headings, bold, italic, lists and tables carry over. It is not a pixel copy of Word's page.

Drop a .docx and it is re-typeset into a PDF right here — the text and its structure, not a pixel copy of the Word page.

In detail

Word and PDF disagree about what a document is. A .docx describes content — this paragraph is a Heading 2, this run is bold — and holds no line breaks or page breaks at all; Word works those out every time it opens the file, from the fonts on that computer. A PDF is the opposite: fixed marks at fixed coordinates. Converting one to the other means doing the typesetting, and here that is a line breaker and a page breaker written for the job.

So this is a conversion for reading, searching and sending, not for reproducing a layout. It reads word/document.xml straight out of the ZIP, keeps reading order above everything, and sets the result in a standard PDF face at a size you choose. What it cannot do it says rather than approximating: images are counted and left out, and a document in a script the standard fonts lack is refused by name.

Convert Word to PDF at a glance

Input
A Word .docx, .docm, .dotx or .dotm file
Output
One PDF set in the standard PDF fonts, usually a few kilobytes
What it does
  • Headings, bold and italic carried over
  • Numbered and bulleted lists, with the right markers
  • Simple tables, with optional borders
  • Page size and margins read from the Word file
  • US Letter, A4 and US Legal, portrait or landscape
  • Page count shown before you save
  • Refuses a script it cannot set, instead of dropping it
Who it is for
Anyone who needs a .docx read, searched or sent as a PDF without installing software
Limits
  • Text only. Images, charts, text boxes, headers and footers are not carried over.
  • Line breaks and page breaks are recomputed, so the pages will not match Word's.
  • Western European letters only. CJK, Arabic, Hebrew and Indic text is refused by name rather than dropped.
  • Three font families — Helvetica, Times and Courier. The document's own fonts are not embedded.
Privacy
The .docx is unzipped and the PDF written in your own tab, so the file is never uploaded

How to convert a Word document to PDF

  1. Drop in your .docx Drag a .docx onto the page, or click to browse. The file is unzipped and read in your own tab, so it is never uploaded.
  2. Check the reading order The stage lists every paragraph, heading, list and table in the order the PDF will set them, and a note above it names anything left behind, such as the number of images found.
  3. Set the page Page size and margins start from what the Word file itself asked for. Switch to US Letter, A4 or US Legal, and choose portrait or landscape, if you want something else.
  4. Choose the type Pick Helvetica, Times or Courier, set the text size and the line spacing, and turn table borders on or off. The page count beside the filename updates as you change them.
  5. Convert and save Press Convert and save. The PDF is written in the tab with the fonts it was measured against, and lands in your downloads under the same name as the .docx.

Convert Word to PDF: common questions

Will the PDF look exactly like my Word document?

No, and no browser tool can promise that. A .docx stores no line positions at all — Word works them out when it opens the file, from the fonts installed on that computer — so this tool re-typesets the text with the standard PDF fonts instead. Reading order, headings, bold, italic, lists and simple tables carry over; the exact line breaks, the original fonts and anything positioned by hand do not.

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. The .docx is unzipped and the PDF is written by JavaScript in your own tab, so the file is never uploaded. Open your browser's network panel while you convert and you will see nothing sent.

Are images and charts included?

No — text only. An image in a .docx is a separate file inside the ZIP with a position in a layout, and placing it needs the layout engine this conversion does not have. The page counts the images it found so you know what is missing, and you can build a PDF of them with PDF from images and join it on with Merge PDF.

Why was my document in Hindi, Chinese or Arabic refused?

Because the standard PDF fonts cover Western European letters only, and this tool embeds no font of its own. Rather than hand back a PDF with every Devanagari or CJK character silently missing, it names the script it found and stops. Accented Latin letters, curly quotes, dashes and the euro sign all convert normally.

Can it open an old .doc file?

No. A .doc is the pre-2007 binary Word format and shares nothing with .docx, which is a ZIP of XML. Open it in Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs, save it as .docx, and this tool will read it.