Word to PDF Before You Send: A Checklist

Word to PDF: why the result differs from what was on your screen

The document looked exactly right in Word, and in the PDF the headings slipped, a table sprawled across two pages, and the numbers in the contents no longer match. The cause is almost always the same one, and it is not the converter.

The conversion does not happen on your computer

A `.docx` file is not a picture of a page but a description of content: text, styles, indents, and a note about which typeface it is set in. Exactly how all of that lands on the sheet is decided at rendering time.

Rendering is done by LibreOffice on a server. It has its own set of fonts, and none of the fonts from your machine are in it. If the document is set in a typeface the server does not have, a similar one is picked.

A similar typeface almost never has the same character widths. A line that occupied ninety millimetres now takes ninety-three, the last word no longer fits and moves down, and the last line of the paragraph moves to the next page. The effect accumulates, and by page ten the discrepancy is obvious.

Which fonts survive the trip without shifting

This is the main thing to check before converting. The server carries a set of fonts chosen specifically so their metrics match the common office ones.

The first five rows are Word's default fonts across versions, which is exactly why an ordinary document converts without surprises. Trouble starts where a designer chose a brand typeface, or the author chose Georgia, Garamond or Segoe UI.

The practical conclusion: if the document is destined for PDF rather than staying in Word, set it in a font from the first five rows. Dull and reliable.

How to run the conversion

1. Check which typeface the document is set in; Word shows it in the style properties. 2. Open word-to-pdf and upload the file. 3. Leave the page size on source if the layout is already tuned for the format you need. 4. Run the conversion and download the result. 5. Compare the page count against the original document. A match means the layout survived; a mismatch means font substitution kicked in.

Comparing page counts is the fastest check there is. It costs a second and catches exactly the class of problem that otherwise gets discovered by the recipient.

What font embedding actually does

The embedding switch is on by default, and its name is broader than its behaviour.

It governs the embedding of the standard fonts into the finished PDF. Non-standard fonts found during conversion are embedded regardless: without that, the document would look different to the recipient than to the sender, which is precisely the problem PDF exists to solve.

It follows that switching it off to reduce weight is usually pointless: you save tens of kilobytes and raise the risk of your reader seeing a different typeface. If the file needs slimming, compress-pdf is the tool, and it works on images, where the gain is an order of magnitude larger.

Page size: source versus A4

The default is source, which means the page setup is taken from the document itself. If Word held A4 with two-centimetre margins, that is what you get.

Choosing A4 or Letter engages a different mechanism: the pages are first rendered to the document's own setup, and each is then fitted onto the chosen sheet. The content is scaled as a whole, proportions preserved, and centred. Landscape pages get a landscape sheet, so a landscape insert in the middle of a portrait document does not end up on its side.

Hence the rule. Source is for documents whose layout is already tuned. A fixed format is for cases where the result must be strictly A4 regardless of the source: a document arrived from a contractor in American Letter, say, and has to be submitted as A4.

The old .doc format and what it ignores

Files saved as `.doc` by older versions of Word are converted by a separate path, as they are.

Page size and font embedding are not applied to them. The tool does not pretend otherwise: if you set those options, a warning arrives listing what was ignored.

The fix is simple and complete: open the file in any word processor and save it as `.docx`. After that every setting is available, and a share of the old layout problems disappears along the way.

When the layout is lost entirely

There is a separate scenario in which the result is plain text on white pages: no pictures, no tables, no typography.

That is the fallback path, engaged when full conversion is unavailable. It is not silent: the result carries a warning saying the document was assembled in a simplified form and the layout was not preserved.

If you get such a file, do not send it on. Run the conversion again: the fallback engages for temporary reasons and usually does not fire on the next attempt.

A separate note on password-protected documents. A `.docx` locked with an open password is structured differently inside and does not convert. The password has to come off in Word.

The checklist before release

Five points, ten seconds each.

The PDF's page count matches Word's.

The table of contents, if there is one, points at the right pages: its numbers were written by Word and become wrong once the layout shifts.

Tables have not sprawled across rows or moved to the next page in the middle.

The document properties hold nothing surplus. Word puts an author name there from the account settings, and it comes out through set-pdf-metadata.

Headers, footers and page numbers are in place: they are set per section and occasionally drift past the margin when a font is substituted.

One last note that saves nerves. Converting back with pdf-to-word does not restore the original document: it builds a new one from the appearance of the page. Edit the source in Word and convert again, rather than editing the result of a reverse conversion.