Is there a way to convert a Word document into a PDF document?
I have seen in OpenOffice that I can directly save the document that I have made into a PDF file. They have given an option at the top for this job.
Can I convert or save my Microsoft Word file (.doc) directly into a PDF file?
Install the "Save As PDF and XPS" add-in (see 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS).
Click the download button, and follow the prompts to install the software. All the free product help is in Free Word to PDF Creator.
You can use PDFCreator or CutePDF Writer to create printers which will effectively convert anything to PDF.
There are some drawbacks to many of the suggested answers on this page:
- Although the Word 2007 plugin (Word 2010 built-in) is extremely useful, it does bloat file size (e.g., it ballooned my 22 KB single-page résumé into a 700 KB PDF file that exceeds the upload limit on many job/career websites -- even when selecting "optimize for web").
- CutePDF - the free version does not preserve hyperlinks.
- PDFCreator - this used to be a great program, but the recent version apparently includes malware, according to numerous reviews on the SourceForge page. (I haven't personally confirmed this.)
- pdf995 - I like this one a lot, if you can look past the ads. However, it only preserves hyperlinks if they are formatted like a URL (e.g., "http://superuser.com")
- pdfEdit995 - even quirkier than its sibling pdf995, but it DOES create PDF files with valid hyperlinks (see "Batch" tab, "Convert Open Word file to PDF"). This is the one I eventually used to create a small résumé with embedded hyperlinks.
If you have Office on the machine, you can use COM to script it to save as a PDF. Here's code in .NET
http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/loufranco/archive/2008/04/01/loading-office-documents-in-net.aspx
In Mac OS X, pull down the File menu, select Print... and click on PDF to save a PDF file. You can do this from any document-based application, including Office.