Convert DOCX to PDF

A Word document is not a picture of a page. It is a set of instructions — this paragraph uses that style, this table gets as much width as it needs, this field shows today's date — and the program opening it decides what those instructions mean. Two computers with different fonts installed, different Word versions or different default page sizes will lay the same file out differently. Usually the difference is small. Occasionally your carefully fitted one-page CV arrives as two pages with a line stranded at the top of the second.

PDF was invented to end that argument. It records where every mark sits and embeds the fonts to draw them, so the file carries its own appearance with it. That is why "please send it as a PDF" is a reasonable request rather than a fussy one.

The fonts are where this conversion is usually won or lost, and it is worth knowing why. Word has defaulted to Calibri since 2007, and Calibri is a Microsoft font that other systems do not have. A converter without it substitutes something else, and because the substitute has different letter widths, every line breaks in a different place — the document is readable, correct, and no longer the layout you approved.

Our server carries Carlito, which is metrically identical to Calibri: same widths, same breaks, same pagination. Caladea does the same job for Cambria, and the Liberation family covers Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. It is an unglamorous detail and it is the difference between a conversion that works and one that only looks like it worked.

The exception is a document set in a font nobody else has — a corporate typeface, something bought for a design. If it is not embedded in the DOCX, no converter can draw with it. Embedding fonts is an option in Word's save dialogue and is worth ticking before you send anything you cannot check.

This is one of the conversions that cannot run in your browser, and we would rather be direct about it than quiet. Reading DOCX properly means running LibreOffice, which is a full office suite rather than a library that fits in a tab.

So the file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our server, and deleted the moment the job finishes — no copy is kept and nobody reads it. Most conversions on this site never leave your device, and this page is not one of them. If a particular document is too sensitive to send anywhere, Word and LibreOffice both export to PDF locally, and that is the better answer for it.

A few things travel better than people expect. Hyperlinks stay clickable. A table of contents generated by Word keeps its internal links. Embedded images, headers, footers and page numbering come through intact.

Tracked changes are rendered as the document displays them, so accept or reject them before converting if you want a clean copy — the PDF shows what Word was showing. Macros are discarded, which is a reason to convert rather than a drawback: a PDF cannot execute code.

A DOCX is a ZIP: the text inside it is compressed, and an image placed in a document is stored once no matter how many times it appears. A PDF has to record where every glyph sits on every page, and it embeds the fonts it used so the file renders the same on a machine that does not have them. On a text-heavy report that embedding alone can add a few hundred kilobytes.

That is the trade the format exists to make, and it is usually worth it. If the result has to fit under an upload limit, compress the PDF afterwards rather than degrading the document first — the images inside it are almost always where the size actually is.