Convert / DOC to PDF
Convert DOC to PDF Online
Convert legacy Word .doc files, the binary format from Word 97 through 2003, into PDF. Rendered by LibreOffice, so old layouts survive.
Why Convert DOC to PDF?
Modern Word is dropping .doc
Recent Office builds open .doc in a restricted mode and warn about it. PDF removes the dependency entirely.
Layout stops shifting
A .doc renders differently in every Word version and every LibreOffice build. A PDF pins the layout permanently.
Archival stability
PDF is a documented, stable format. The binary .doc format is effectively frozen legacy that fewer tools read each year.
Nothing to install
No Word licence and no desktop software. Upload the file and download the PDF.
.doc vs PDF, measured
The legacy .doc format is a binary layout that only Word ever read reliably, and fewer tools open it correctly each year. PDF is larger on disk because it embeds the fonts and the exact page layout, which is precisely what makes it render identically everywhere.
| Measure | .doc | |
|---|---|---|
| Test document | 14,336 bytes | 43,468 bytes |
| Size change on conversion | -- | about 3x larger |
| Identical layout on every device | No | Yes |
| Fonts embedded | No | Yes |
| Editable afterwards | Yes | Not easily |
| Opens without Office installed | Often not | Always |
Measured on a short report containing headings, body text, a table and a list, converted with LibreOffice, the same engine this converter uses. Real documents vary enormously: the PDF overhead is mostly embedded fonts, so it is close to a fixed cost rather than a multiple, and it matters proportionally less the longer the document.
Questions
How is this different from the DOCX converter?
Only the input. .doc is the pre-2007 binary format; .docx is the modern zipped XML one. Both routes use LibreOffice and both are accepted here.
Will an old .doc still lay out correctly?
Usually. LibreOffice has strong legacy .doc support. Documents leaning on very old WordArt, embedded OLE objects or macros are the ones most likely to shift.
What happens to macros?
They are dropped. PDF has no macro capability, so a macro-driven document converts as its static rendered content only.
Are fonts embedded in the PDF?
Fonts available on the server are embedded. A document using a font not installed there falls back to a metrically similar substitute, which can shift line breaks slightly.
Is my document kept?
No. It is converted in memory and discarded immediately. Nothing is written to disk or logged.
This one comes to our server
A browser cannot do this one, so the file is uploaded, held in memory, converted, returned and discarded. Nothing is written to disk and there is no account to attach it to.
What the privacy policy saysFurther reading
Practical7 minTurning phone photos of paper into a PDF somebody can actually readMost rejected document uploads fail for four reasons, and all four are decided before you convert anything: light, angle, resolution, order.Measured9 minConverting Word to PDF: what survives, and what leaksTwelve generated documents through a headless LibreOffice. Font substitution turned out to be a solved problem. Tracked changes did not.Modernize your old documents
Legacy .doc in, stable PDF out.