Convert multiple Word documents to PDF

Why Word makes this hard

Word converts one open document at a time. The export dialogue has no option to add more files, and Word for Mac has no batch feature at all. The workarounds below all exist because this gap has been there since the exporter arrived in Word 2007 and Microsoft has not filled it.

For two or three documents, open each one and use the steps in Convert Word to PDF. The methods here pay off from about five files upward, and for a folder of fifty the command line is the only sane route.

Word to PDF multiple files, one at a time in this tab

Word to PDF takes one .docx per run. Drop the first file, wait for the receipt, download the PDF, then drop the next. Each PDF is reopened and its text counted against the document before the download appears, so a file that lost a page is reported at the moment it happens rather than found in the merged result. Nothing is sent to a server, which matters for a folder of HR letters or client contracts.

Ten files take ten runs and a few minutes. The result is a folder of PDFs named after their sources, each with its hyperlinks clickable and its text selectable. A legacy .doc is refused; save those as .docx in Word first, or use the LibreOffice route below, which reads both.

LibreOffice from the command line

LibreOffice costs nothing and includes a headless mode. Open a terminal in the folder and run the command below. Every document in the folder becomes a PDF with the same name, links intact, without a window opening. On Windows the program is soffice.exe in the LibreOffice program folder; on a Mac it is inside the application bundle under Contents/MacOS.

soffice --headless --convert-to pdf *.docx

The renderer is LibreOffice's, not Word's, so a document with unusual fonts or heavy Word-specific layout can shift by a line. Convert two files first and compare them against Word's own export. For plain reports and letters the output is indistinguishable, and the command handles .doc as well as .docx.

File Explorer and a Word macro on Windows

Set Microsoft Print to PDF as the default printer, select the Word files in File Explorer, right-click and choose Print. Windows opens each document in Word in turn and prints it. The PDF printer asks for a file name every time, so you sit and type names, but nothing else needs installing. The cost is the print route itself: hyperlinks turn into plain text and headings do not become bookmarks.

Word on Windows also runs Visual Basic macros, and a ten-line macro that loops over a folder and calls ExportAsFixedFormat for each file is a well-worn pattern. It uses Word's own exporter, so hyperlinks, bookmarks and fonts come out exactly as a manual export would. Macros need the Developer tab and a moment of trust in code you paste from somewhere. Read it before running it.

Bulk convert Word to PDF and keep the links

Three of the four routes keep hyperlinks: the browser converter, LibreOffice and the macro. The File Explorer print route does not. Bookmarks come only from Word's own exporter, which means the macro, because the browser converter draws pages and text without a bookmark tree and LibreOffice writes bookmarks only when its export dialogue is used rather than the command line.

Whatever method converts the files, the result is a folder of PDFs, and the next question is whether the reader wants a folder or a single document.

One PDF instead of many

Merge PDF takes the converted files in this tab, puts them in the order you set, and writes one PDF. It reopens the result and checks it before the download, so a document dropped on the way in is caught before you send the file.

Order comes from the list in the tool, not from file names, so a folder named 1 to 12 still needs a glance. The full route from separate Word files to a single PDF is in Merge Word documents into a PDF, and the other Office guides are under PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint help.