Word to PDFPDF tool
Convert Word to PDF
Drop a .docx document here, or browse
Microsoft Word documents (.docx) up to 50 MB. Legacy .doc files must be re-saved as .docx first.
Choose files
Upload a .docx file and get a genuine PDF back: real selectable text, embedded images, original page size, and tables that keep their grid. No Office installation, no account, and no file kept after the conversion.
- Real, selectable PDF text
- Tables and lists preserved
- Inline images embedded
- In-memory, never stored
Free, no sign-upProcessed in memory
How Word to PDF conversion works
- 1
Upload a .docx
FileNova checks the file extension, size, and ZIP package signature before a single byte is parsed.
- 2
The document is rebuilt
Styles, runs, tables, numbering, and media are read from the Office Open XML package and laid out page by page.
- 3
Download the PDF
The finished PDF streams straight to your device with a no-store cache policy. Nothing is retained.
What is supported
- ✅ Headings and body text with bold, italic, and underline
- ✅ Font size, text colour, and left/centre/right/justified alignment
- ✅ Bulleted and numbered lists, including nested levels
- ✅ Tables with merged cells, header rows, and cell shading
- ✅ Inline JPEG and PNG images
- ✅ Page size, margins, and explicit page breaks
Honest limitations
- ⚠️ Headers, footers, footnotes, and endnotes are skipped
- ⚠️ Text boxes, shapes, charts, SmartArt, and equations are skipped
- ⚠️ Floating (anchored) images are placed in the text flow
- ⚠️ Multi-column sections are rendered as a single column
- ⚠️ Fonts are mapped to the PDF standard families, so line breaks can differ
- ⚠️ EMF, WMF, TIFF, and SVG images are skipped and reported
- ⚠️ Scripts outside the Latin-1 range (Arabic, Cyrillic, CJK) are not rendered
Privacy and file handling
The .docx is parsed and rendered entirely in memory while your request is open. Nothing is written to disk, no copy is stored for later, and the PDF is returned with Cache-Control: no-store. Uploads are capped at 50 MB and the conversion endpoint is rate limited to protect the server from abuse. See the privacy policy for the full description of how documents are handled.
Common conversion errors
- “Not a valid .docx document”
- The file is not a ZIP package. It is usually a renamed .doc, RTF, or PDF file — open it in Word and use “Save As → Word Document (.docx)”.
- “The document contains no readable text”
- The file is empty or everything inside it is in parts this converter does not read (for example a single text box).
- “Exceeds the maximum allowed size of 50 MB”
- Word documents are small until high-resolution images are pasted in. Compress the images in Word (Picture Format → Compress Pictures) and upload again.
Frequently asked questions
7Do I need Microsoft Word installed to convert a .docx file?
No. FileNova reads the Office Open XML package that makes up a .docx file and rebuilds the document as a PDF on the server. Word, LibreOffice, or any other desktop application is not required — only the .docx upload.
Which parts of my Word document are converted?
Headings, body paragraphs, bold/italic/underline formatting, text colour, font size, alignment, bulleted and numbered lists, tables (including merged cells and cell shading), inline JPEG and PNG images, page size, margins, and explicit page breaks. Anything outside that list — headers, footers, footnotes, text boxes, shapes, charts, SmartArt, and equations — is skipped rather than approximated. If you need a loop that keeps every Word feature, convert with Word’s own “Save as PDF” and use Compress PDF to shrink the result.
Will the PDF text still be selectable and searchable?
Yes. Text is drawn as real PDF text objects, not a picture of the page, so you can highlight, copy, and search it. Images are embedded at the resolution they had inside the .docx package.
Why does my converted PDF look different from Word?
Word lays out text with the fonts installed on your computer. A PDF built with the standard PDF fonts (Helvetica, Times, and Courier families) uses slightly different character widths, so a long paragraph can break onto a different line. Complex Word features such as text boxes, floating images, multi-column sections, and headers/footers are not reproduced at all. Check the page count and a couple of pages before sharing a legal or print-critical document.
What happens to my file after conversion?
The upload is parsed in memory, the PDF is streamed straight back to you, and neither file is written to disk or kept afterwards. The response is marked no-store so browsers and proxies do not cache the document.
Why can’t I upload a .doc, .docm, or .dotx file?
Legacy .doc files use a completely different binary format, and .docm/.dotx packages may contain macros or templates that should not be executed or silently flattened. Open the file in Word or LibreOffice, use “Save As”, and choose “Word Document (.docx)”, then upload that copy.
Does a scanned Word document convert?
A .docx that only contains scanned page images converts, but the PDF will also be image-only — the pictures are embedded, not recognised. If you need selectable text from a scan, run it through Smart OCR first, or use PDF to Word for the reverse direction.