# How to Save a Word Document as a PDF on Windows, Mac, Phone and Google Docs, and Keep Fonts, Links and Layout

Use Save As or Export and pick PDF, not Print. In our test, printing to PDF lost every link and bookmark. Options, fonts, file size and markup explained.

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- **Canonical URL:** https://dothecalculation.com/blog/files/how-to-save-word-as-pdf
- **Category:** Files & PDFs
- **Author:** Do The Calculation Team
- **Published:** 2026-09-29
- **Reading time:** 16 min read
- **Publisher:** Do The Calculation (https://dothecalculation.com)
- **Methodology:** https://dothecalculation.com/methodology

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## How to save a Word document as a PDF: the short answer

In Word on Windows, choose File, Save As (or Save a Copy), pick PDF as the file type and press Save; open Options first to set bookmarks and the page range. On a Mac, choose File, Save As and set File Format to PDF. On a phone, use Export or Save as PDF in the Word app. In Google Docs, choose File, Download, PDF. Avoid printing to PDF when you can: in our test it dropped every link and bookmark and made the file twice the size.

Tool: [Convert Word to PDF in your browser, without Word installed](https://dothecalculation.com/tools/word-to-pdf) — Real text, embedded fonts, working links and bookmarks from headings, with a report of what was converted. Your file is never uploaded.

Below are the steps for each app, what each option in Word’s PDF dialog does, why fonts, links and page breaks sometimes change, how to keep tracked changes and comments out of a PDF you send, and a table from our own test: one 12-page document saved to PDF seven ways, with the size, fonts, links, bookmarks and accessibility tags of each result.

## Word for Windows: Save As PDF, and the options that matter

Microsoft’s help page for saving to PDF in the Office desktop apps describes the steps (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/collab-files/save-or-convert-to-pdf-or-xps-in-office-desktop-apps). In short:

- Choose File, then Save As, or Save a Copy if the document has already been saved to OneDrive or SharePoint.
- Choose where to save it, then pick PDF in the Save as type list.
- Choose Standard (publishing online and printing) or Minimum size (publishing online) under Optimize for.
- Press Options to set the page range and the extra information described below, then OK and Save.

The Options dialog is where most of the difference between a good PDF and a poor one is decided. According to Microsoft’s page, it offers:

- Page range: all pages, the current page, a selection or a range of pages.
- Publish what: Document, or Document showing markup. Only the second puts tracked changes and comments into the PDF.
- Create bookmarks using: Headings, or Word Bookmarks. With Headings, every paragraph in a Heading style becomes an entry in the PDF’s bookmarks panel, so a reader can jump between sections.
- Document properties: copies the title, author and other properties into the PDF.
- Document structure tags for accessibility: adds the tags a screen reader uses to read the document in order.
- ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A): writes a PDF suited to long-term archiving.
- Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded: when a font’s licence forbids embedding, draws that text as a picture rather than letting a reader substitute another font.
- Encrypt the document with a password: the PDF asks for a password before it opens.

Standard and Minimum size differ mainly in the pictures. In our 12-page test document with three photos, Standard kept the photos at 220 pixels per inch and made a 395 KB file; Minimum size cut them to 96 pixels per inch and made 282 KB, with the text, fonts, links and bookmarks identical. Use Standard for anything that will be printed and Minimum size for a file that will only be read on screen.

## Word for Mac: Save As PDF, and the online conversion option

Microsoft’s page for the Mac gives the steps: choose File, Save As, type a name, set File Format to PDF, and press Export (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/save-or-convert-to-pdf-on-your-mac). File, Share, Send PDF attaches a PDF copy to an email instead. Microsoft suggests saving the PDF under a different name from the document, so the original is not confused with the copy.

On a Mac the choice between two kinds of PDF matters more than on Windows. Microsoft’s guide to accessible PDFs tells Mac users to choose Best for electronic distribution and accessibility (uses Microsoft online service), which sends the document to a Microsoft service to be converted and returns the PDF; Microsoft says the service does not store any of your file content (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-accessible-pdfs-064625e0-56ea-4e16-ad71-3aa33bb4b7ed). The other choice, Best for printing, carries no such note and does not go through the online service. University accessibility teams, such as Syracuse University’s, advise the online option because hyperlinks may not convert correctly with Best for printing (https://itsaccessibility.syr.edu/accessible-documents/creating-accessible-pdf-files/saving-as-an-accessible-pdf/). If the document is confidential and you would rather it did not leave the Mac, that is a reason to use Best for printing and check the links afterwards, or to convert it in the browser instead.

## Word for the web, iPhone, iPad and Android

- Word for the web: choose File, Export, then Download as PDF, or Download as PDF with comments, and confirm; the file lands in your Downloads folder (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/export-word-document-as-pdf).
- Word on iPhone and iPad: open the document, tap the three dots, tap Export, choose PDF and pick where to save it (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/save-a-pdf-of-your-file-on-your-mobile-device).
- Word on Android: Microsoft’s same page describes the route through printing: tap File, then Print, choose Save as PDF as the printer, tap the PDF button and save. Because that is a print route, check that any links still work.
- Whatever the device, the PDF lands where the app saves downloads or where you chose to save it; on a phone that is usually the Files app on an iPhone or the Downloads folder on Android.

## Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice

Google Docs: choose File, Download and pick the PDF format; Google’s help page on downloading files describes the Download menu, and for very large documents suggests printing to PDF from Chrome instead (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/49114). Google announced in December 2024 that PDFs downloaded from Docs carry improved accessibility tags for paragraphs, headings, hyperlinks, image descriptions and lists (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2024/12/release-notes-12-06-2024.html), and added tags for tables, equations and checkboxes in March 2025 (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2025/03/).

Pages on a Mac: choose File, Export To, PDF, then set Image Quality (higher quality makes a larger file) and, if you want, include comments; Advanced Options holds the accessibility setting. Apple’s guide also says descriptions you gave images and drawings are exported for screen readers such as VoiceOver (https://support.apple.com/guide/pages/export-to-word-pdf-or-another-file-format-tance1161f26/mac).

LibreOffice Writer: choose File, Export As, Export as PDF. The General tab has a Tagged PDF option (LibreOffice’s help notes it “can increase file size by huge amounts”), PDF/UA for full accessibility, PDF/A for archiving, and whether to export comments; hyperlinks are exported automatically, and headings can become bookmarks (https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/01/ref_pdf_export_general.html). LibreOffice opens .docx files, so it is also a free way to make a PDF from a Word document without Word.

## Print to PDF versus Save as PDF

Printing to PDF, whether through Microsoft Print to PDF on Windows or the PDF button in a Mac print dialog, sends the document to a virtual printer. A printer only receives what goes on paper, so everything that exists only on screen is at risk: clickable links, bookmarks, document structure and the document’s properties. Saving or exporting as PDF goes through Word’s own converter, which knows about all of those.

We measured it rather than take it on trust. Printed with Microsoft Print to PDF, our 12-page test document kept all its text and pages, but the PDF had no working links (the three web links and the internal cross-reference were plain text), no bookmarks and no tags, and at 808 KB it was twice the size of Word’s Standard export. Saved as PDF with bookmarks and tags switched on, the same document kept all four links, 18 bookmarks from its headings and full tags. The only good reason to print to PDF is to get a flat copy on purpose, such as a PDF without any of the document’s properties.

## One document, seven ways to make a PDF: what we measured

The test document: a 12-page report written in Word in Calibri 11 pt, with a table of contents, six Heading 1 and twelve Heading 2 sections, three photos, a table with a repeated header row, a header, a footer with “Page X of Y”, three web links and one internal link to a bookmark. We made it with Microsoft Word 16 (Microsoft 365) on a Windows 10 PC and then produced a PDF by each route available on that computer. We checked each result with the PyMuPDF library: file size, page count, fonts embedded, links, bookmarks and whether the file is tagged.

**The same 12-page Word document saved to PDF by seven routes (measured 30 September 2026)**
| Route | Size | Pages | Fonts embedded | Links working | Bookmarks | Tagged |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Word, Save As PDF, Standard, bookmarks and tags on | 395 KB | 12 | 9 of 9 | 4 of 4 | 18 | Yes |
| Word, Save As PDF, Standard, bookmarks and tags off | 381 KB | 12 | 9 of 9 | 4 of 4 | 0 | No |
| Word, Save As PDF, Minimum size | 282 KB | 12 | 9 of 9 | 4 of 4 | 18 | Yes |
| Word, Print, Microsoft Print to PDF | 808 KB | 12 | 5 of 5 | 0 of 4 | 0 | No |
| This site’s Word to PDF, pictures Keep | 389 KB | 12 | 4 of 4 | 4 of 4 | 18 | No |
| This site’s Word to PDF, pictures Balanced | 160 KB | 12 | 4 of 4 | 4 of 4 | 18 | No |
| This site’s print view, saved by Chromium’s PDF engine | 1,362 KB | 17 | 7 of 7 | 4 of 4 | 0 | No |

Three findings stand out. Word’s own Save As PDF is the most complete result when Word is available, and Minimum size is the easy way to a smaller file. Printing to PDF loses everything interactive and makes a bigger file. And the print-view route, which draws the document as a web page and lets the browser make the PDF, kept the links but broke pages in different places: 17 pages instead of 12, because a web page does not paginate the way Word does. Our in-browser converter matched Word’s 12 pages, links and bookmarks, and with pictures set to Balanced made the smallest file, but its PDF is not tagged for screen readers, so for an accessible PDF use Word’s export with tags switched on.

## Fonts: why they change, and how to keep them

A PDF normally carries its fonts inside it, so it looks the same on a computer that has never seen them. Word embeds the fonts it can when it saves as PDF. Two things can go wrong. The font’s maker can set its licence to forbid embedding; Microsoft’s page on embedding fonts lists the permission levels a font can carry, from non-embeddable to installable (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/fonts/benefits-of-embedding-custom-fonts), and for a font that cannot be embedded the PDF option Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded draws that text as a picture instead. Or the document names a font that is not installed on the computer making the PDF, for example a document written on a Mac with a font the Windows PC does not have, and Word substitutes the closest font it has before the PDF is even made.

The fix for the second case is to embed the fonts in the Word document itself, so they travel with it: in Word for Windows, File, Options, Save, Embed fonts in the file. Microsoft notes this can make the document much larger. When a font is replaced, line breaks and page counts can change too, because a different font has different letter widths. Fonts made to match the widths of Microsoft’s own, such as Carlito for Calibri and Caladea for Cambria, avoid that: our [Word to PDF](/tools/word-to-pdf) converter uses them, because Microsoft’s fonts cannot be shared by a website, and in our tests it kept Word’s page breaks on all 19 test documents.

## Links and cross-references that stop working

If links in your PDF are not clickable, the most common cause is the route: a printed PDF keeps the text of a link but not the link itself, as our Print to PDF result shows. Check that the PDF was made with Save As or Export. A link typed as plain text that was never made into a Word hyperlink will also not be clickable, although some PDF viewers detect web addresses on their own. Links inside the document, such as table of contents entries and cross-references, depend on the bookmarks behind them; the table of contents must be a real Word table of contents (References, Table of Contents), not typed text. Word’s own converter has had bugs here: in 2021 Microsoft’s support forum reported that links to bookmarks and in tables of contents were lost by Save As PDF in some Microsoft 365 builds until an update fixed it (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5141250/word-365-save-as-pdf-does-not-convert-hyperlinks). If the links in a PDF matter, click a few before you send it.

## Tracked changes, comments and hidden text

What ends up in the PDF depends on Publish what in Word’s PDF options: Document leaves tracked changes and comments out, and Document showing markup puts them in. That is only half of the story, because the Word file itself still contains them. Microsoft’s page on tracking changes is blunt: “Hiding changes doesn’t remove them from the document” (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/track-changes-in-word-197ba630-0f5f-4a8e-9a77-3712475e806a). If you might send the Word file as well as the PDF, accept or reject every change and delete the comments first.

Before sending anything sensitive, run Word’s Document Inspector: File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document. Microsoft’s page lists what it finds, including comments, revision marks from tracked changes, document properties and personal information, headers and footers, and hidden text (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/remove-hidden-data-and-personal-information-by-inspecting-documents-presentations-or-workbooks-356b7b5d-77af-44fe-a07f-9aa4d085966f). Microsoft advises running it on a copy, because some of what it removes cannot be restored. If you switch on Document properties in the PDF options, remember that the author name comes from those properties too.

## When the PDF is too large

Text costs almost nothing in a PDF; the size comes from pictures. A phone photo pasted into a Word document can be several megabytes and is usually printed far smaller than its pixels can fill. The first fix is Minimum size in the PDF options, or Compress Pictures in Word before saving. If the PDF is already made, [Compress PDF](/tools/compress-pdf) recompresses its pictures while the text stays text, and can aim at a limit such as 2 MB. [How to reduce PDF file size](/blog/files/how-to-reduce-pdf-file-size) measures each option on a 10-page Word report, including Word’s own two export settings.

## Accessible PDFs from Word

An accessible PDF is a tagged PDF: alongside what the page looks like, it carries a structure of headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and image descriptions in reading order, which is what screen readers and reflowing on small screens rely on. Microsoft’s guide to accessible PDFs says to run the Accessibility Checker first (Review, Check Accessibility), then, on Windows, keep Document structure tags for accessibility ticked in the PDF options, or on a Mac choose Best for electronic distribution and accessibility. Tags are only as good as the document: real Heading styles, real lists and alternative text on pictures make a good tagged PDF, while bold text posing as headings makes a poor one. The standard for fully accessible PDFs is PDF/UA (ISO 14289), which requires complete tagging in reading order, embedded fonts and alternative text for images (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/UA). PDF/A, the archiving format, is a different standard: it requires every font to be embedded and forbids things such as encryption and external content, so it suits records that must open unchanged in decades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A).

## Check the PDF before you send it

A PDF looks finished the moment it opens, which is exactly why problems slip through. Two minutes with the file open in any PDF viewer catches almost all of them:

- Page count and page breaks: compare the number of pages with Word’s status bar, and scroll through looking for a heading stranded at the foot of a page or a table split awkwardly. A different font or paper size is the usual cause.
- Links: click one web link and one entry in the table of contents. If neither works, the PDF was probably printed rather than saved.
- Bookmarks: open the viewer’s bookmarks or outline panel. If it is empty, bookmarks from headings were not switched on, or the headings were not in Heading styles.
- Search: press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for a word you know is in the text. If nothing is found, the text was drawn as pictures, for example by the bitmap text option, and cannot be searched or read aloud.
- Properties: open the document properties in the viewer and look at the title and author. An old author name from a template or a colleague’s draft is common and easy to fix in Word before saving again.
- Markup: search for a word you deleted with tracked changes on. If it appears, the PDF was made with Document showing markup.

Page breaks deserve a word of their own, because they are the change people notice most. Word decides where each page ends from the fonts, the paper size, the margins and the spacing between paragraphs. Change any of those between writing and saving, for example by opening a document written on A4 on a computer set to US Letter, or by letting a missing font be replaced, and every page after the first difference can move. Setting the paper size in Layout, Size, and keeping headings with the paragraph that follows them (Paragraph, Line and Page Breaks, Keep with next), makes the PDF match what you saw on screen.

## When Word is not installed: converting in the browser

Sometimes the device you are using has no Word: a Chromebook, a borrowed laptop, a shared computer in a library or an office. Uploading the document to an online converter works but hands your file to a stranger, which matters for a contract, a CV with your address or a medical letter; [Are online PDF converters safe?](/blog/files/are-online-pdf-converters-safe) explains what that involves and how to check a site. [Word to PDF](/tools/word-to-pdf) reads the .docx in the browser and makes the PDF on your device, with embedded fonts that have the same letter widths as Word’s, working links, bookmarks from headings, and a report of anything it approximated, such as text boxes or charts. It also converts several documents at once into a ZIP, which Word itself does one file at a time. Its limits are the table’s last column: no accessibility tags, and designed layouts with many text boxes are better left to Word or the print view.

Going the other way, from a PDF back to an editable document, is a harder job with its own guide: [How to edit a PDF](/blog/files/how-to-edit-a-pdf). And if you want a document to start from, the [Word templates](/word-templates) on this site are built to convert cleanly.

## Frequently asked questions

**Why do my fonts change when I save as PDF?**

Either the font is not installed on the computer making the PDF, so Word substitutes another, or its licence forbids embedding. Embed the fonts in the Word file (File, Options, Save), use fonts installed on both computers, or tick Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded.

**Why are my hyperlinks not working in the PDF?**

Most often because the PDF was printed rather than saved: printing keeps the text of a link but not the link. Use Save As or Export and choose PDF. Also check that the link is a real Word hyperlink and, for a contents page, a real Word table of contents.

**What is the difference between Print to PDF and Save as PDF?**

Save as PDF uses Word’s converter and keeps links, bookmarks, tags and properties. Print to PDF sends the pages to a virtual printer and keeps only what goes on paper. In our test the printed PDF had no links, no bookmarks and was twice the size.

**How do I save only some pages as a PDF?**

In Word for Windows, press Options in the Save As dialog and set Page range. Where an app has no page range option, export the whole document and take out the pages you need with a split tool afterwards.

**How do I make the PDF smaller?**

Choose Minimum size when saving, or compress the pictures in Word first. For a finished PDF, a PDF compressor recompresses the photos while the text stays text; in our test Minimum size alone took a 395 KB PDF to 282 KB.

**Do comments and tracked changes appear in the PDF?**

Only if you choose Document showing markup under Publish what in the PDF options. With Document, they are left out of the PDF, but they are still inside the Word file until you accept or reject the changes and delete the comments.

**Can I save a Word document as a PDF on my phone?**

Yes. In Word on iPhone or iPad, tap the three dots, Export, PDF. In Word on Android, Microsoft describes File, Print, Save as PDF; check the links afterwards, since that is a print route.

**How do I convert Word to PDF without Microsoft Word?**

Open the .docx in Google Docs, Pages or LibreOffice and export a PDF, or use an in-browser converter that reads the .docx itself, so the file stays on your device. Check fonts and page breaks, since the result is not made by Word.

**How do I make an accessible PDF from Word?**

Use real Heading styles, lists and alternative text on pictures, run Check Accessibility, then save as PDF with Document structure tags for accessibility ticked on Windows, or Best for electronic distribution and accessibility on a Mac.

Tool: [Convert Word to PDF in your browser](https://dothecalculation.com/tools/word-to-pdf) — For a device without Word, a shared computer or a batch of documents: embedded fonts, links, bookmarks and a conversion report. Nothing is uploaded.

More guides to converting, compressing and sending documents are in [Files and PDF guides](/blog/files).

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_Source: [Do The Calculation](https://dothecalculation.com/blog/files/how-to-save-word-as-pdf). Quote freely with attribution and a link to this page._