Convert to PDF

A PDF is the safest way to send something you do not want the other person to edit or reflow. It fixes text, pictures and page breaks in place, so a contract, a résumé or a slide deck looks the same on a phone, a laptop and a printer. The converter accepts the office formats people use every day, plus a set of less common ones that are hard to open without the right program: Hancom HWP files, Apple Pages and Keynote documents, Windows XPS print files and DjVu scans.

You do not need the program that made the file. A Keynote deck converts without a Mac, an HWP file without the Hancom Office suite, and a Word document without Microsoft Office. That matters when someone sends you a file you cannot open, or when an upload form asks for PDF and nothing else. The converted PDF opens in every browser, on phones and in free readers.

Each family of files is handled a little differently, because each one stores its layout in its own way. The four cards below show what to expect from the main groups and which setting matters most for each.

PDF began as an Adobe format in the early 1990s and is now maintained as an open ISO standard, so any program can read and write it without a license. The current edition is ISO 32000-2, also called PDF 2.0. PDF/A is a separate family of standards, ISO 19005, that narrows PDF down to the features that will still display correctly when today's software is gone.

That narrowing is the whole point of PDF/A. Fonts must be stored in the file, colors must be defined so they reproduce the same way, and anything that depends on an outside resource, a script or encryption is left out. The result is slightly larger and cannot carry a password, but an archive can be confident it will open in the future. Courts, national archives, universities and some tax portals name PDF/A in their filing rules. If you are not asked for it, a regular PDF is the more flexible choice. To turn a finished PDF into an archival copy later, PDF to PDF/A does that on its own.

By default the PDF uses the page size stored in your document, so a Word file set to Letter stays Letter and a slide deck keeps its widescreen shape. Set Page size to A4, Letter, Legal, A3 or A5 only when every page must come out the same size, for example when you combine files from different countries into one print job. A4 is the usual size in most of the world and is defined by ISO 216; Letter and Legal are the standard sizes in the United States and Canada.

Orientation follows the source as well. Switch it to landscape for wide spreadsheets or tables that would otherwise be scaled down to small type. Margins can stay as the document set them, or be forced to none, narrow, normal or wide. Narrow margins fit more on a page but can clip content on home printers that cannot print to the edge.

Two settings decide how large the PDF gets. Image quality controls the JPEG compression of photos inside the document; the default of 90 looks the same as the source, and a lower value makes a lighter file for email. Embed fonts stores the typefaces in the PDF so the text looks right on computers that do not have them. Leave it on unless you are sure the reader has the same fonts. If the result is still too large to send, run it through the Compress PDF tool afterwards.

Text files, Markdown and HTML have no page size of their own, so set Page size to A4 or Letter when the paper size matters. Long lines wrap at the margin, and Markdown headings, lists and tables are styled as a simple document. Web pages keep their text and images, but menus and scripts that only work inside a browser are left as they appear when the page loads.

A batch can mix file types: a Word letter, an Excel price list and a PowerPoint deck can go up together, and each one comes back as its own PDF with the same settings. If two files need different page sizes or margins, convert them in separate batches. Every PDF keeps the name of the file it came from, with only the extension changed, so it is easy to match results to originals.

Open each result before you send it. Look at the last page of a spreadsheet for cut-off columns, at slides with video or animation (the PDF shows the first frame only), and at any page that used an unusual font. These are the places where a converted file most often differs from what you saw on screen, and a quick look takes less time than a reply asking for a corrected copy.

Once the PDF is ready, the other tools for documents and the PDF tools can take it further: join several PDFs into one with the Merge PDF tool, or turn its pages into pictures with Document to Image when a site only accepts JPG or PNG. If you need an editable copy again later, keep the original Word, Excel or PowerPoint file; converting a PDF back to an office format works, but the layout rarely comes back perfectly.