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Use this easy-to-use program to quickly convert a Word document to a PDF file for free

Use this easy-to-use program to quickly convert a Word document to a PDF file for free

Vote: (21 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Free PDF Solutions

Version: 4.0

Works under: Windows

Vote:

Program license

(21 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

Free PDF Solutions

4.0

Works under:

Windows

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Fast format conversion
  • Supports batch conversion

Cons

  • Trial limited
  • Outmoded

Free Word to PDF Converter is a trial-limited program that converts Word documents to PDF.

Free Word to PDF Converter is a Windows utility program that converts Word documents to PDF in a fast and accurate matter. Although the program has the word “free” in its name, it isn’t actually free, which is a topic we’ll get to toward the conclusion. That issue aside, the program is effective at accomplishing what it sets out to do. This program supports both DOC and DOCX formats, which are file formats used by the popular Microsoft Word processor. PDF stands for portable document format and is a file format developed by Adobe to be small in size but also to encapsulate many resources beyond just text. Since Word does this as well, pairing these formats for different purposes can be quite powerful.

The installation of the program is rather simple. You can even unpack its contents to a folder. It doesn’t require registry entries and the like, which means you can put it on a flash drive and carry it with you. The user interface is straightforward and effective as well. This program does not do much beyond what has already been mentioned. There are no nested menu items. Every function is obvious and readily available. The UI is outdated aesthetically, however, and this does stand out on newer OS versions. Note that while Windows 10 isn’t officially supported, we found that it works fine in compatibility mode.

The program is impressively fast when converting a single file. Even when testing with unusually large Word documents, the operation was done in just a few seconds. This could, of course, be due to newer more powerful PCs brute forcing it, but we found older reviews make mention of the program speed as well. Free Word to PDF Converter is also quite accurate for the most part. If you have a Word document that looks good, the result in PDF will look good as well. The program, however, lacks any advanced control at all. If a graph, for instance, doesn’t look exactly as you’d like it to, there isn’t much you can do about it—at least with this program.

Free Word to PDF Converter also supports batch conversions and provides a number of ways to do this. The current batch is maintained as a list on the main UI. You can drag and drop files and even entire folders onto it. You can also use the file window to select files and folders. If a folder contains an unsupported file type, it will simply be ignored. You can also manipulate the list. Move items higher in priority, or move them lower. While batching is a great feature, we did notice the process became increasingly slow as it worked through bigger batches. If you want to set it and forget it, this may not be an issue. Otherwise, you may want to break up big batches into a series of smaller ones.

It’s an unfortunate decision by the developer to call this Free Word to PDF Converter when it isn’t freeware. This will undoubtedly shade user perception of the product. What is free is a 14-day trial, and you can use it as much and as often as you like in this 14-day period, which may be more than enough for the average use who needs a program like this. But at the end of that 14 days, you will need to pay for a license to keep on using it, which brings us to another question. Who is this program for?

Microsoft Word has integrated support for Word-to-PDF conversions. Adobe also offers a free tool that achieves this from the PDF perspective, which is useful if you have to tweak resources. There are also many programs on the market that are actually free for batch conversions and so forth. With that in mind, it’s unclear who would want to use this program and, in particular, pay for it.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Fast format conversion
  • Supports batch conversion

Cons

  • Trial limited
  • Outmoded