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In this article, we will discuss easy ways to convert Word to PDF documents. Microsoft Word to PDF conversion is much easier than you might imagine. You do not need to use any special tools to convert Microsoft Word documents to PDFs except Microsoft Office itself.

How to Convert a Microsoft Word Document to a PDF?

Before we get into how to convert a Word to PDF, let us discuss why someone would want to do this?

Converting a Microsoft Word Document to a PDF has many benefits. Some of the benefits to a Word to PDF conversion are listed below.

• PDFs are easier to distribute, and almost all web browsers now have the in-built capability to open a PDF.
• Word documents can break their structure while viewed in other computers depending on the fonts used, version of Microsoft Word installed, etc. Once you convert a Word document to a PDF, you no longer have to worry about it showing up differently for users you share it with.
• PDFs play much nicer with printers. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you have extensive options on how you want your PDFs printed.
• You can easily append multiple PDFs to create a large book or a single document for printing.
• You can quickly secure PDFs through password protection.
• PDFs are compact files that won’t take up much space on your drive. 
• Email providers often have an attachment size limit. You can add many images and graphs to a PDF document and keep it all compressed. 
• All Operating Systems universally support PDFs – Whether you are a MAC, Windows, or Linux user, it will work seamlessly.
• You can create professional fillable forms in PDF format.

How to Convert Word to PDF Steps

Once you have your Word document open, go to the > File > menu as shown below.

In the next window that opens up

1. Go to Save as then click on “This PC.”
2. Type in a name for the file to be saved
3. Select PDF from the drop-down menu
4. Click on Browse

In the Browse window that opens up, you have a few more advanced options that are easy to miss. You can adjust them as shown below.

1. On the left-hand side, you will see multiple locations for saving your file. Click on a place that is easy for you to find. (Desktop, Documents folders are often recommended). If you have a Thumb Drive that you would like to save the file to, you can click on “This PC” scroll down to select it from the list of drives.
2. Secondly, Click on Options > Change page range to All, Current Page, Selection, or Specific pages.
3. Finally, click on Save to export your PDF file.

Once you export the PDF file, Microsoft Word will return you to the document editing screen. Your saved PDF file should automatically open with the Windows default PDF handler.

In addition, if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, the exported file should open in it.  Another great PDF reader is Foxit Reader, which you can download and install for free.

For some reason, if the exported PDF file doesn’t open at all or doesn’t open in a specific PDF reader that you would like, you can fix it by following the steps below.

1. Locate the saved file on your computer
2. Please right-click on the file and click on “open with,” as shown below.

Finally, select the program that you would like the PDF file to open in.

Now, if you would like to set a favorite PDF reader for all of your PDF files from here on, follow the steps below.

Once you click Choose another app, you will be presented with the following window. Here choose the program you would like to open PDFs with, then select “Always use this app to open .pdf files.”

If you don’t have dedicated PDF readers like Foxit or Adobe Acrobat installed, Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome would serve the purpose.

Convert from Word to PDF Using Other Methods

If you don’t have Microsoft Office installed, you can still convert from Word to PDF using other methods as described below.

Convert Word Files to PDF files using Google Drive & Google Docs

Sign up for a free Google account here if you don’t already have one, and then go to Google Drive.

1. 1. Drag and drop the Microsoft Word files that you would like converted into Google Drive. 
   2. Right-Click on the MS Word file as shown below, then click on “Open With” Google Docs.

Once the Word file opens up in Google Docs, you can save them to your computer as a PDF file as shown.

You can also try the following alternative methods to convert Microsoft Word files (.DOC or .DOCX) to PDFs.

LibreOffice – LibreOffice is a Free & open-source replacement to Microsoft Office on your Windows Computer. LibreOffice can be used to convert Word to PDF.

Third-Party Conversion Websites – Word to PDF – Although CloudConvert promises data security, we do not recommend that you convert Microsoft Word files containing sensitive information using this method.

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