How to convert doc to pdf in Mac OS X
By default, Mac already built in a way to convert doc to pdf. For those who always need to convert doc to pdf in Mac, you can easily perform the conversion without installing any software.
To convert doc to pdf in Mac OS X follow the steps below:-
- Open your doc file with your Text Editor (ex: Ms Word, TextEdit, Writer, Excel, Open Office etc)
- Click on File -> Print or Press Command + P
- Print Window will pop up, click on “PDF” button at the bottom left and select “Save as PDF …”
- Choose the location you wan to save the pdf file and click “Save”
- Done, you just convert your doc to PDF file
** If you find the pdf file size big, then you might want to read my post about how to reduce pdf file size in mac os x
** This method is not only limited to convert doc to pdf, but also allow you to convert almost any file to PDF. **
Tags: convert doc to pdf, convert doc to pdf mac, doc to pdf, doc to pdf mac, mac tips, pdf
Posted at September 12th, 2008 by chua
If you think this article helps you to solve your problem and clear your headache, feel free to buy me a drink :)
September 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I’m sure just about every Mac user has figured that out or will in the near future. What about the other way around??
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:25 am
OMG I feel so dumb. Okay, I had to submit a physics lab report by 1pm today, I tried to convert my word doc online, but my file was too big… then I figured out why my file was so big and fixed it (which dramaticly decreased my file, YAY!)… so I try to convert my word doc again, and it would not convert some of the pictures (all the online converted did this). So I find a free converter that I can download from the apple website, and that one does not convert ANY of my pictures… So I explain all this to my TA for my physics lab, and he says he’ll convert it for me, I just have to email it to him. While I wait for him to convert it, I try to do it myself because I need to figure it out, I stumble across this site and I try it and it converts in literally 3 seconds… I’ve seriously spent about 2 hours trying to convert this stupid doc into pdf, and this way works in 3 secs! Oh gosh, the time I’ve wasted. Oh well, I know for next time. But THANKS! This really is a help.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:23 am
My mac won’t do this anymore – now it just makes a blank pdf. Any idea why or how to fix it?
January 14th, 2009 at 6:52 am
YOU’RE A LIFE-SAVER. CLEARLY, WE NEED HELP, AND YOU HELPED ME A TON!!! Thank you Thank you my dear friend. My hat off to you.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
When i try and print and excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs to PDF, only the last page is saved…? how do i print a excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs to a pdf?
January 18th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Grant, pdf do not support tab. so if u want to export all the tab, you might wan to do it manually.
before you export, move to the tab that you want to export and do the export steps.
basically, this pdf export only export the current active tab
January 28th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Chua, this works a treat – however when converting a word document all internal hyperlinks disappear (e.g. in a document with a table of contents the listed items are no longer clickable). Any idea how to do this – what software to use?
January 31st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Daniel: if you are using .doc file. try to open your files using Open Office. Open Office allow you to export the doc file to pdf. It should have the clickable link together.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:16 am
I’m having the same problem as Valerie, above. First it was Now Up To Date on my MacBook, then it was MYOB on my wife’s computer, now it’s Quark Express on my G5. All running the latest OSX software. I’ve reinstalled both Leopard and the other software, and they still produce corrupt or blank “pdf” files (is it really a PDF when there is not data in the file?). The only thing that we can do is move the files we want to print from one computer to the other where that particular program can still make PDFs, but obviously this is no good because it wastes time, we only have four computers, and the degradation seems to be spreading. Does anybody know how to fix this? Where is the patch download? Do I have to go buy yet another copy of Acrobat Distiller? What happened to the one that worked a few months ago? Anybody?
Re: Valerie Says: November 19th, 2008 at 2:23 am My mac won’t do this anymore – now it just makes a blank pdf. Any idea why or how to fix it?
April 9th, 2009 at 1:34 am
This helps a lot! Thanks a lot. Please help me bit more by letting me know how to convert pdf to doc. Thanks once again.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
When I do this, my pdf file is way too big! OSX creates a 15mb pdf file, but using a pdf writer in Windows XP for the same word doc produces a 1.5mb pdf file.
I can’t be sending around a 15mb file.
Any idea why OSX isn’t able to condense the size and how to go about fixing the problem?
June 12th, 2009 at 12:07 am
I have the same question. I have been using MicroSoft Word for Mac 2008. When I try to convert a 10Mb file into a PDf it spits back to me a 60Mb file. I thought that converting to a PDF was to condense it to a picture file. Is there a work around on this?
Thanks,
June 12th, 2009 at 8:59 am
hi evan n aron,
different program have different approach to convert doc to pdf. and there are also many factors that affect the size of the converted pdf file. if your .doc file has many images, then the pdf file will be much more larger.
I’m not sure which converter work the best, but if you wan a smaller file size, you may try to convert doc to pdf in other way. eg. in Open Office u can try to “Export to PDF” function under File.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am
cheers mate
July 25th, 2009 at 5:29 am
thank you very much, this has been and will continue to be very helpful.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:43 am
When I try this my MSWord document (3.4MB) gets split into three pdf files: 2.3MB, 440KB and 2.1MB. I have page and section breaks throughout but why is MSWord choosing to split up my file at these points?
Is this happening because of some file size restriction? What do I do about it?
September 26th, 2009 at 1:53 am
this was so easy! thanks a lot for the posting!
September 30th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
i’m having the same issue when i try to save a word doc to pdf it splits it into two files. what can i do to fix the issue????
October 17th, 2009 at 5:09 am
Using word 2008 creates separate pdf if you have inserted section breaks or blank pages, I think. I converted my Word 2008 doc file back into Word 2004, and it seems to have solved the problem. New versions of software are not always an improvement.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Thanks a lot! After searching and looking around other webs and programs this has been the best and easier solution I found!
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers from Spain.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The conversion works perfectly in Word 2008 for windows. Thank goodness I have a windows machine as well. The Mac version of office 2008 is not the same as windows even though they have the same name. It is very surprising that the pdf converter for the Mac is so poor; indeed converting to Word 2004 in the Mac, the formatted text changes. It seems that Microsoft has not done their job, yet again.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:36 am
You’ve been a great help.
December 9th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I think the inbuilt pdf converter is hopeless. The files are always really big where I end up using my PC to convert to PDF.
December 20th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
This is fine, but the problem I’m having that I cannot seem to resolve is that all of my Word doc formatting shifts in the conversion. My page numbers move from being an inch from the bottom of the page to being 1-1/2 inches from the page bottom. My headers shift from 2″ to greater than 2″ from the top of the page. Help!
January 6th, 2010 at 1:13 am
I had the problem with a 1.4mb word file becoming 10.8mb when published to pdf. The easiest way that i have found to solve this problem is to open the pdf in preview and then click on Save As, choose Reduce File Size from the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, and choose a name and location for the file. It now became 478kb from 10.8mb.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:17 am
Eres DIOS!!! GRACIAS MY FRIEND!
January 21st, 2010 at 1:39 am
Nathan, Thank you, thank you thank you. My 380 k Word .doc that was converted to a bloated PDF of 2.4 MB was reduce to a 112k PDF file when I applied your advice!
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Nathan, you’re a legend!!! This is the coolest tip I found on this issue!
THANK YOU SO MUCH, this is perfect! Cheers from Australia
February 6th, 2010 at 5:27 am
I love you!
thank you so much!
I am so frustrated that they are hiding this in the print function and not the “save as” where I really thought it would be. You have saved me from so many head aches.