Word to PDF

The file you edit is not the file you should send

A Word document is a living thing: it re-flows around whatever fonts, printer settings and window width the next machine happens to have. Send a .docx and your carefully placed page breaks move, a missing font gets substituted, and — the classic — tracked changes and comments you forgot about arrive in full view. A PDF is the opposite: the layout is fixed at conversion time and every reader sees the same pages. That is why CVs, quotes, theses and official letters travel as PDF. The lottery is real even between honest programs — an older Word, LibreOffice and a web office suite will each render the same .docx a little differently, and none of them is wrong; the format simply leaves room. A PDF removes the room. There is a second, quieter reason: a .docx invites editing, and a quote the recipient can adjust before printing is not a document you want in circulation.

How faithful the conversion is, honestly

The conversion runs on LibreOffice, whose Word compatibility is excellent for the documents most people actually write — letters, reports, CVs and contracts with headings, tables and images come through essentially identical. The honest edge cases: documents built from many floating text boxes, decorative fonts that are not installed on the server (a substitute is used, which can shift line breaks), and WordArt-style effects may land slightly differently. Macros are ignored entirely, which in a conversion is a feature, not a loss. The practical habit is simple: open the PDF once before sending it. In the rare case something has shifted, simplifying the layout or switching to a widely available font fixes it at the source. The converter is not fussy about the input, incidentally: .doc, .docx, .odt and .rtf all go in through the same door.

The PDF/A tick box, for archives and authorities

PDF/A is PDF with the escape hatches removed: every font embedded, no external references, nothing that could stop the file rendering identically in twenty years. Courts, tax offices, universities and tender platforms ask for it precisely because of that self-containedness — and this tool produces PDF/A-2 when you tick the box. The cost is a somewhat larger file, and the point is longevity rather than looks: the pages are the same ones you would get anyway. So the rule stays refreshingly simple — tick it when the receiving party explicitly asks for PDF/A or when you are archiving something for the long haul, and leave it off for everyday sending. One combination to know about: PDF/A and password protection do not mix, because the archival standard forbids encryption — so keep the open PDF/A copy for the archive, and protect only the ordinary copies you send around.

Limits, the queue, and protecting the result

Files up to 20 MB are accepted, and conversions run one at a time on the server — deliberately, because a converter that stays stable beats one that races and falls over. At a busy moment your file waits a few seconds in line. The free tier covers five conversions per tool per day; beyond that, credits pay per conversion or a day pass opens the whole category for twenty-four hours — and your document is deleted the instant the conversion finishes, on every tier, succeed or fail. One follow-up worth knowing: if the PDF carries personal data — a contract, an HR letter, anything with an address and a signature on it — the PDF lock tool can wrap the result in a PIN before you email it, so the file is useless without the code you share separately.

What happens to my document?

Word files can't be converted inside the browser, so this tool briefly uses our EU-hosted server: your document is written to a temporary folder, converted to PDF by LibreOffice, and the folder is deleted the moment the conversion finishes — succeed or fail. Nothing is stored, logged or inspected.