Word to PDF Without Layout Breaks: Fonts, Page Numbers, Images and Tables

Why the layout can change

A .docx file does not store finished pages. It stores text, styles and rules: this paragraph uses that font at that size, this picture floats to the right of that paragraph, a page break comes before this heading. Every program that opens the file lays out the pages anew. If it measures a font even slightly differently, a line wraps one word earlier, the paragraph gets one line longer and everything below moves down.

Fonts are the most common cause. A document written in Calibri looks right on a computer with Calibri installed. On a device without it, a substitute font with different letter widths takes its place and the line breaks shift. Toolula avoids this for the standard Office fonts by using open fonts with the same letter widths: Carlito for Calibri, Caladea for Cambria, Tinos for Times New Roman and Cousine for Courier New. The words then wrap at the same place as in Word.

Fonts outside that set, such as a corporate typeface or a decorative heading font, can only be used if they are installed on the device doing the conversion. Otherwise a similar font is used and you should look closely at those pages.

Prepare the Word document

A few minutes in Word save a lot of checking later. Most problems in converted documents come from formatting done by hand rather than with styles: empty paragraphs used as spacing, manual line breaks to push a heading onto the next page, tabs to line up columns. When the line breaks move by a single word, all these hand-made layouts break.

• Accept or reject all tracked changes and delete comments you don't want in the PDF.
• Use page breaks or the paragraph option Keep with next instead of empty lines to move headings.
• Put images in line with text, or anchor floating images to the paragraph they belong to.
• Build columns of figures as tables, not with tabs and spaces.
• Insert page numbers as fields (Insert, Page Number), never as typed numbers.
• Save old .doc files as .docx first; the converter reads only .docx.

Headers, footers and page numbers

Page numbers in Word are fields that the program fills in when it lays out the pages: PAGE for the current page, NUMPAGES for the total and SECTIONPAGES for the pages of the current section. Some converters freeze the number Word last saved, so every page says Page 1 of 3, or drop fields that sit directly in a paragraph. Toolula fills in these fields only after it has planned every page, so Page 4 of 12 is right on every page, including number formats such as Roman numerals and numbering that restarts in a new section.

Word can also show a different header on the first page, different headers on odd and even pages and different headers per section. These variants are kept in the conversion. If your title page has no header in Word, it has none in the PDF.

Images, tables and long sections

Pictures placed in line with the text move with it and rarely cause trouble. Floating pictures, which text wraps around, are positioned relative to an anchor paragraph; if that paragraph moves to the next page, the picture moves with it. Check pages with floating images particularly carefully.

Tables are laid out with the column widths and borders of the document. Look at tables that run across a page break: if a row must stay together with the one below, it is safer to move the whole table with a page break in Word than to rely on the automatic break.

Some layouts cannot be written as plain text and shapes, for example rotated text boxes, certain gradients and drawing canvases. Toolula then writes that page as a picture with an invisible text layer on top, so the page looks right and the text can still be searched and copied, though it is not as sharp when zoomed in. Everything else stays real vector text, sharp in print and selectable.

Converting step by step

Keep the .docx. A PDF is the right format for sending and archiving, but larger changes are always easier in the source document. Small corrections, such as a wrong date found after converting, can be made directly in the PDF with Edit PDF, which redraws the line in a matching font.

• Open Word to PDF and drop the .docx file. Word is already selected as the source.
• Click Convert to PDF. The pages are laid out one by one in your browser.
• Download the PDF and compare it with the original, page by page.
• If something is off, fix it in the .docx and convert again rather than patching the PDF.

Checking the PDF before you send it

Look at the page count first. If the PDF has one page more or less than Word shows, a line break moved somewhere and something has been pushed over. Then scroll through and look at the ends of pages: a heading alone at the bottom, a table row cut in half, a picture on its own page.

Search the PDF for a word you know is in it. If it is found, the text is real text that applicant tracking systems, screen readers and search tools can read. Finally check headers and footers on the first, a middle and the last page.

For documents that went through several versions, such as a contract after negotiation, Compare PDF shows the differences between the PDF you are about to send and an earlier PDF version, so a last-minute change is not overlooked.

Accessibility and archiving

A PDF that has to meet accessibility requirements needs tags that describe headings, lists, tables and reading order. Word writes such tags when you save as PDF there and keep the option Document structure tags for accessibility switched on. For these documents, export from Word itself and check the result with the PDF Accessibility Checker; the guide on accessible PDFs explains the checks.

If the document must be archived for years, convert the finished PDF to PDF/A as a final step, as described in the guide PDF/A for Archiving.

Excel and PowerPoint files

Spreadsheets and presentations go through the same kind of conversion. Excel to PDF lays out each sheet with its column widths and cell formatting; set the print area and page orientation in Excel first, because a wide sheet otherwise spreads over many narrow pages. PowerPoint to PDF draws each slide as a page, with rotated shapes, pictures and simple gradients as vector content; slides with effects that cannot be drawn that way become a picture with an invisible text layer, like the special Word pages described above.

For presentations, remember that speaker notes, animations and embedded videos do not exist in a PDF. If the PDF is meant as a handout, check that every slide makes sense without the animation steps that revealed its content one by one.

Frequently asked questions