Convert Word to PDF

Turning a Word file into a PDF is the usual step before sending a CV, a cover letter, an invoice or a dissertation: the document looks the same everywhere and nobody edits it by accident. The conversion respects manual page breaks and centred paragraphs, repeats a long table’s header rows at the top of each page when they are set to repeat in Word, and carries the document’s headers and footers onto every page, page numbers included, in roman numerals or letters as in Word, with “Page 2 of 5” counted section by section and the current chapter title; a page number or page count written in the text, not in a header, also takes the PDF’s value (the number of the page it lands on, the page count of the PDF or of the section). The page background colour and the page border (single or double line; another pattern is named) are drawn, except in a PDF made of page pictures (a document in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese…), where a message names them. Columns aligned with tabs stay aligned: each tab goes to its tab stop (left, right, centred or decimal, with its dot leader), and header and footer pictures keep their size, except a picture taller than a third of the page, brought down to that height, and a watermark or a picture behind the text, drawn small (36 points high at most), which a message points out; a picture wider than its place in the header or footer (the width of the text, its share of a line divided by tabs, or its cell of a table) is narrowed to that width. In the PDF, the page numbers of a table of contents are those of the PDF’s pages; when they cannot be worked out, they are left out, and a message says so. Without a footer, the pages are numbered at the bottom (1 / 5). Each section keeps its size and orientation (A5, Letter, A3 landscape…); if you force A4 or Letter in the settings, it keeps only its orientation. The PDF’s margins are about 2 cm. Pages saved as pictures (a document in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese…) all share one size and one orientation, landscape as soon as one section is, and a message names the portrait sections and the sizes that were not kept. A table too wide for the page is printed smaller and, if it still doesn’t fit, split into successive tables that repeat the first column; a message then says so.

Footnotes are gathered at the end of the document, numbered as in the text. The text of a text box is placed after the paragraph it is anchored to, a chart becomes a table of its values, shown in the chart’s number format (13,801 € for 13,800.5), and an equation, including an old Word 97-2003 equation (EQ field), is written as linear text (1/2, x²), each superscript or subscript keeping its level, even inside another. A picture cropped, flipped or turned by any angle in Word is the same in the PDF; its usual colour effects (greyscale, black and white, transparency, brightness and contrast) are applied, and an effect that cannot be reproduced is named by a message that says where the picture is; a picture cropped to a shape (oval, rounded rectangle, triangle, diamond) is cut the same way, with its outline. Comments, hidden text, drawn shapes (arrows, frames…) and purely vector EMF or WMF drawings are not carried over, and a message says so. The background colour of table cells, including the one the table style gives (header row, banded rows), and their alignment (amounts on the right, centred columns) are kept. On a dark or mid-tone fill (a blue header, a grey), cell text in the automatic colour is white, as in Word, and text in a single colour lighter than the fill (white on blue) keeps its colour; a background from the style that is too dark for the text on it (black text) is not printed, and a message says so. Elsewhere, text colour, whether set on the text or given by a style (a blue heading), highlighting and paragraph borders are not kept, and a message says so. Code written in a fixed-width font (Consolas, Courier) keeps its indentation and spaces. A heading formatted by hand comes out as bold text at normal size, so use the Heading 1, Heading 2… styles instead. Finally, accept or reject tracked changes before converting; otherwise insertions stay in and deletions vanish; a message says so and quotes the deleted text.