Converting .doc files to .pdf

Question

Anybody aware of a piece of software which could do MS Office .doc to .pdf conversion for me?

I already tried OpenOffice but it appeared to be rather slow and resource-hungry for large documents.

score 18 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:13

18

If you have MS Office 2007, you can use the Save as PDF plugin.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:13

Matthew Brubaker

226

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:08

11

PDFCreator is a free print-to-pdf tool based on ghostscript. It's fairly good, although the output of Acrobat Distiller tends to be a bit nicer.

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:08

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

1,894

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:10

6

If you want to do it programmatically and you're a .NET or Java programmer, you could use Aspose.Words in combination with Aspose.PDF.

It worked well for me.

EDIT: It seems that using a recent version, you only have to license Aspose Words.

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:10

splattne

16,056

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:11

5

I regularly use - and recommend - PrimoPDF, which is available in both free and paid-for incarnations.

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:11

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:19

5

CutePDF Writer

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:19

Claudiu

1,796

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:06

4

PDFCreator

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:06

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:14

3

Office 2007 has a free PDF export Add-In available here

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:14

Jasper Bekkers

776

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:04

2

Adobe Acrobat for money

OR

CutePDF for free, and it's great!

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:04

Galwegian

135

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:12

2

I personally use PDF 995, a free pdf-printer :) works great

answered Oct 28 '08 at 16:12

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 03 '10 at 07:04

2

And no one mentioned openoffice with built in PDF saving support?

answered Mar 03 '10 at 07:04

alpha1

1,686

score 1 · Answer 11 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

If you want to do it programatically take a look at my response here:

Convert DOC to PDF -- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/218556/send-document-to-printer-with-c#221818

This is code I currently use and it works very well. It will handle anything that Word will open such as .doc, .docx, .rtf etc.

Also, if you have many files to convert you can write you code such that Word is opened once in the background and files are subsequently opened, converted and closed, works very fast and I've had no issues with crashing etc. even when converting thousands of files at a go.

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 25 '09 at 07:17

1

Try Altsoft Xml2PDF

answered Feb 25 '09 at 07:17

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Nov 18 '09 at 12:34

Hey, look what I found. http://www.phplivedocx.org/2009/02/06/convert-doc-to-pdf-in-php/

PHPLiveDocx is a document creation program in php. It can be used to convert Doc to PDF. I've not tried it yet myself, but I certainly shall be experimenting with it soonish.

score 1 · Answer 14 · edited Jul 10 '19 at 08:59

In the past I've tried different approaches. But now I'm fine with Microsoft Office Word 2007 and the SaveAsPDF-Addin. I've recorded the "save as pdf" process as macro and refined it a bit. Here is my current version:

Sub UpdateAndPDF()
' Update page header

    If ActiveWindow.View.SplitSpecial <> wdPaneNone Then
        ActiveWindow.Panes(2).Close
    End If
    If ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Type = wdNormalView Or ActiveWindow. _
        ActivePane.View.Type = wdOutlineView Then
        ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Type = wdPrintView
    End If
    ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekCurrentPageHeader
    Selection.WholeStory
    Selection.Fields.Update
    ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekMainDocument

' Update document (like F9)

    Selection.WholeStory
    Selection.Fields.Update
    WordBasic.AcceptAllChangesInDoc

' create PDF

    PDFFilename = (Replace(ActiveDocument.FullName, ".doc", ".pdf"))
    ActiveDocument.ExportAsFixedFormat OutputFileName:= _
        PDFFilename _
        , ExportFormat:=wdExportFormatPDF, OpenAfterExport:=False, OptimizeFor:= _
        wdExportOptimizeForPrint, Range:=wdExportAllDocument, From:=1, To:=1, _
        Item:=wdExportDocumentContent, IncludeDocProps:=True, KeepIRM:=True, _
        CreateBookmarks:=wdExportCreateHeadingBookmarks, DocStructureTags:=True, _
        BitmapMissingFonts:=True, UseISO19005_1:=False

' Close Word

    ActiveDocument.Save
    Application.Quit
End Sub

With the macro option of word I can use this macro in the command line for automation purposes. e. g.

"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" wordfile.doc /mUpdateAndPDF

If you want to use it for several documents in a batch file, you can try this:

@echo off
SET WORD="c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE"
FOR %%f in (*.doc) do %WORD% %%f /mUpdateAndPDF

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Jun 14 '10 at 13:23

1

You could use online service like one at http://www.freepdfconvert.com No need to install any software.

answered Jun 14 '10 at 13:23

Tomas

141

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Nov 15 '09 at 19:56

0

If you're just doing it occasionally, you can use Zamzar.com to do all sorts of conversions.

TRiG.

answered Nov 15 '09 at 19:56

TRiG

1,360

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 03 '09 at 14:08

I have researched this market extensively and Aspose.Words is worth considering. It does a good job and is 100% .net, but if you are after perfect fidelity (Aspose doesn't render footnotes, limited text flow and floating objects) then the only option you have is to automate Office directly, which is a pain on the server, or use a product that has done all the hard work for you such as the Muhimbi PDF Conversion Service that runs on a server and can be called using a web service.

Full disclosure, I work for Muhimbi (which is why I have researched the market so extensively).

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Dec 21 '09 at 21:53

Aspose.Words has been mentioned above. I just want to add the most recent info.

Aspose.Words now converts to PDF by itself (you previously needed Aspose.Words + Aspose.Pdf). One component to use is better than two.

One of the benefits you get with Aspose.Words is that you can get the same great looking documents not only in PDF, but in XPS, render pages as images and even print documents.

I'm on the Aspose.Words team.

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Dec 21 '09 at 21:59

I havent looked at the built in PDF features in the last couple of years, but you can use office automation to print to a PostScript Printer driver, which can be be setup as a printer. This creates a PostScript(PS) File which can be converted to PDF using GhostScript.

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Jun 24 '11 at 14:44

0

I am using doPDF, really great and it doesn't popup any adds like PDF 995

answered Jun 24 '11 at 14:44

Nicu Zecheru

5,572

phuclv · Answer 21 · 2018-07-20T16:44:18.250

0

Office 2010 and above can save the file as pdf without any plug-in. Office 2013 can even open and edit the pdf file (of course if the file has not been protected from editing)

Windows 10 also has a built-in PDF printer and you don't need any 3^rd party software for that purpose

edited Jul 20 '18 at 16:44

answered Oct 30 '13 at 01:02

phuclv

30,396
15
136
260

score -1 · Answer 22 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

-1

See this question for the C# code to a free Word to PDF converter.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

Community

1

answered Jan 26 '10 at 17:10

Eric Ness

101

Converting .doc files to .pdf

22 Answers22

Linked

Related