Word documents: how to save as a PDF file

Saving a Word document as a PDF file has many ad­vant­ages. Crucially, PDFs are compact and, unlike Word documents, can be opened on most computing systems without format com­pat­ib­il­ity issues. The layout and design of a PDF is retained even after sending. This is not the case with Word documents (.doc): if the receiver has a different version of Word, or uses another program such as Open­Of­fice, there are often format­ting and layout dis­crep­an­cies. There may also be com­plic­a­tions with the display of images and fonts. Con­versely, the original format­ting of a PDF file is always preserved, so it will be displayed exactly as intended.

For this reason, PDFs are es­pe­cially useful when you wish to print a document; the document will then be printed precisely as it appears in the PDF file. Ad­di­tion­ally, you can choose to protect the file with a password so that others may only make limited edits, or none at all. In this way, it’s easy to control the access per­mis­sions of your files. In short, a PDF file offers much more control over the present­a­tion and access rights of your work compared to a Word document.

Here, we demon­strate the various methods of how to save a Word document as a PDF.

If you select this option, you can then set the password in the dialog box and save the file. This process is both swift and is more than suf­fi­cient for most users. Nev­er­the­less, the options in Word do have some lim­it­a­tions. For example, you can only password protect an entire PDF file, rather than in­di­vidu­al functions. Fur­ther­more, creating a PDF in this way usually takes up more storage space than is strictly necessary.

If you want more precise control over the final PDF document, it’s best to use a dedicated tool. As an un­com­plic­ated way to save a Word document as a PDF, however, the method described above is suf­fi­cient.

Dedicated software for con­vert­ing files to PDF offer more extensive func­tion­al­ity than the in­teg­rated function in Microsoft Word. Although tools for editing PDFs directly can be expensive, tools for con­vert­ing to PDF tend to be free. Such tools often also install a special printer drive auto­mat­ic­ally to simplify the process. With this, you can easily convert your document to PDF via the print command in Word. The print preview will show the document exactly as it will be printed. You can then save the document as a PDF file directly in the print window and receive your desired document with its format­ting intact.

There are multiple options under ‘Settings’, ranging from en­cryp­tion to automatic saving. You can also use the ‘Merge’ function to add the current file to an existing PDF file. This makes it easy to con­sol­id­ate multiple Word documents into a single PDF. Finally, the ‘E-Mail’ function attaches the file to an e-mail auto­mat­ic­ally, while ‘Save’ converts your file to PDF and saves to your documents.

When using the free version of PD­FCre­at­or, you’ll have to tolerate some adverts from time to time. The paid version, however, is advert-free.

A tool called PD­FAr­chi­tect is included with PD­FCre­at­or, which you can use for simple editing tasks such as rotate, split, merge, encrypt, and adding text.

PDF24 works in much the same way as PD­FCre­at­or. Following in­stall­a­tion, the program functions as a pseudo-printer: simply select ‘pdf24’ as your printer to convert to PDF. However, PDF24 is more stream­lined than PD­FCre­at­or, and dispenses with adware. In addition to simple editing, en­cryp­tion, splitting, and merging, PDF24 also allows users to convert a PDF into an image file. The in­teg­rated fax function is also highly con­veni­ent.

If you’re wondering how to save a file as a PDF on a Mac, then the pre­in­stalled TextEdit ap­plic­a­tion could be the solution. Simply open your document via TextEdit and select ‘Print’ from the ‘File’ tab. In the resulting dialog box, you will find a drop-down menu under ‘PDF’ – use this to save, fax, and send the document as a PDF. If you wish to encrypt the file, you will find various options when you select ‘Export’ from the ‘File’ tab.

Since Macs are shipped with this tool pre­in­stalled, there is far fewer PDF con­ver­sion software available for macOS compared to Windows. Of course, Adobe Acrobat’s PDF programs include this feature, but the func­tion­al­ity goes far beyond just con­ver­sion, making these tools expensive. For simple file con­ver­sion, the built-in TextEdit is more than enough.

You can also convert Word documents to PDFs online via certain websites – upload your original file and the site converts it and offers you the PDF to download. If all you need is a simple con­ver­sion of a single document, this method can save you a lot of time and effort, since no software in­stall­a­tion is necessary.

However, the security of your data is not ne­ces­sar­ily guar­an­teed. While the following website examples both promise that your files will be deleted shortly after pro­cessing, when you don’t have control over the process you can never be 100% sure your data will be safe. Therefore, we advise caution when using these services to convert sensitive documents.

Bear in mind that the free version of the tool only allows two con­ver­sions per hour. In order to receive unlimited access to all of the tool’s functions, you can upgrade to the paid version – Smallpdf Pro. You can subscribe to the Pro version directly from the website. The speed of the free version is con­vin­cing, but if you need to convert multiple Word files it’s worth upgrading to Pro, or using another tool.

The website itself contains some ad­vert­ising – be aware that some ad­vert­isers design their ads to look like download buttons to trick people into clicking.

Online2PDF is a similar online tool, which supports the con­ver­sion of up to 20 files sim­ul­tan­eously. Like SmallPDF, it works via drag and drop, but also allows you to drag several files into the same window at once. You then have several options: convert the Word files into a single PDF, merge them, convert them one at a time, or export in­di­vidu­al pages of the document in separate PDF files. Despite the re­l­at­ively low con­ver­sion speed, the results are con­vin­cing.