Any safe free software to convert Word to PDF?

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
14 replies · 10K views
yungman
Messages
5,741
Reaction score
291
Any suggestion on a free program to convert Word to PDF. I was playing around and I got malware that I am still trying to clean up.

Thanks
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I have had mostly good luck with PrimoPDF. It's freeware that puts a PDF writer as an option in your Printer selection list when you go to print from Word (or other programs). Sometimes it throws false errors, but still makes the PDF file just fine. I haven't updated my installs for a while, so maybe they've fixed that weird behavior.
 
berkeman said:
I have had mostly good luck with PrimoPDF. It's freeware that puts a PDF writer as an option in your Printer selection list when you go to print from Word (or other programs). Sometimes it throws false errors, but still makes the PDF file just fine. I haven't updated my installs for a while, so maybe they've fixed that weird behavior.

Thanks

I downloaded and installed. I do not see the new printer. But it installed the MailWasher Pro! What is that?
 
yungman said:
Any suggestion on a free program to convert Word to PDF. I was playing around and I got malware that I am still trying to clean up.

Thanks

http://www.pdf995.com/

If you want more options search for PDF Printer Driver.
 
yungman said:
Any suggestion on a free program to convert Word to PDF. I was playing around and I got malware that I am still trying to clean up.

Thanks

CutePDF http://cutepdf.com/ Basically you end up "printing" to a pdf file
 
phinds said:
You do realize that if you have Microsoft Word, one of the save options is PDF, yes?

Oh cool! I didn't know that was in there. I checked, and my current Word version does indeed have that feature. I'll give it a try. Thanks phinds!
 
I have the 2003 Office Suit. I don't see that option.

I got the PrimoPDF running, it's all good.

thanks
 
phinds said:
You do realize that if you have Microsoft Word, one of the save options is PDF, yes?

This is only available in 2007 and 2010 only. It was never implemented in 2003 although MS may have a tool for it that you can download.
 
OpenOffice, which is basically a free version of Microsoft Office, and includes versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, has an "export as pdf" option. It is available here.
 
Install the 123pdf converter. With this software you can covert your word documents to pdf. It is a free software to download.
 
Hasn't been mentioned, but PDF Creator is free (donation ware) and open-source:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

It installs a printer driver (just like Acrobat), and allows you to combine several documents together (print them in succession, wait, and then combine). There are several programs called "PDF Creator"--you have to get the one that's on Sourceforge. The one caveat is that it prints to A4 by default, but you just have to go into the printer configuration and change it to US Letter (assuming that you're in the US / Canada). The other caveat is to disable installation of the Yahoo toolbar (can't fault them for that--gotta defray *some* of the bills...)
 
Not to mention the fact you can prepare pdfs without installing anything. First, add a postcript printer (I don't consider it to be an "installation", you have these drivers on the disk as part of Windows, they are just not used). Second, print to a file. Third, use some external service to convert ps to pdf.

It usually requires some tinkering with the printer version, last time I tried it was some Linotronic that gave good results.