# Word to PDF on a Mac

Canonical HTML: [https://pdfpix.com/guides/word-to-pdf-on-a-mac/](https://pdfpix.com/guides/word-to-pdf-on-a-mac/)

Word for Mac gives you three ways to make a PDF, and two of them cost something. The Save As dialogue's Best for electronic distribution option keeps links and bookmarks but uses Microsoft's online service. Best for printing renders on the Mac. The print dialogue drops every hyperlink. Word to PDF in the browser keeps the links and the file on the Mac.

## Steps

1. **Open File, Save As.** Press Shift, Command and S, or choose Save As from the File menu. Give the PDF a name and choose a folder.
2. **Change the format to PDF.** Open the File Format menu at the bottom of the dialogue and pick PDF. Two radio buttons appear underneath it.
3. **Choose the export.** Best for electronic distribution and accessibility keeps links, bookmarks and tags and converts through Microsoft's online service. Best for printing stays on the Mac.
4. **Export and check.** Click Export. Open the PDF in Preview and click one hyperlink and one heading in the sidebar to confirm they made it.

## Why the Mac needs its own guide

Word for Windows has an Export command with an Options button. Word for Mac has neither. Its PDF choices live in Save As, and the two radio buttons there behave differently from anything on Windows. The Windows route is in [Convert Word to PDF](https://pdfpix.com/guides/convert-word-to-pdf/); the paths here are Mac only.

The Mac also offers a system-wide PDF button in every print dialogue, and because it is always there, it is the one people reach for first. It is the worst of the routes for a document that will be read on screen.

## Best for electronic distribution and accessibility

This option produces the PDF Word for Windows would produce: clickable hyperlinks, a bookmark for each heading, embedded fonts and accessibility tags for screen readers. The small print under the button says it uses Microsoft's online service. The document is sent to Microsoft, converted, and the PDF comes back. For a report or a CV that is fine. For a document you may not send outside the company, it is not.

The conversion needs a network connection and takes a few seconds longer than a local save. If the option is greyed out, the Mac is offline or the document is open from a location Word cannot send from.

## Best for printing

This renders the PDF on the Mac using Word's own layout engine, with fonts embedded and text selectable. Word 2016 builds dropped hyperlinks on this path; the current app keeps them. Bookmarks and tags are not written, so the PDF sidebar shows no outline. Open the result and click one link before relying on it.

This is the choice when the document must not leave the machine and you want Word's own rendering. Because it uses Word's engine rather than the print system, the layout matches what you see in Print Layout view, page for page.

## How to convert Word to PDF on a Mac without Word's dialogue

[Word to PDF](https://pdfpix.com/word-to-pdf/) opens in Safari, Chrome or Firefox on the Mac. Drop the .docx on the page. It is laid out in the browser tab with the document's own margins and fonts, hyperlinks stay clickable, every character is drawn as selectable text, and the finished PDF is reopened and its text counted before the Download button appears. At least 98% of the text must come back or there is no download.

The file never leaves the Mac, which is what Best for printing offers, and the links survive, which is what Best for electronic distribution offers. It does not write a bookmark tree, and it refuses a legacy .doc, so save those as .docx first. It also needs no Word licence, which matters on a Mac that has Pages and nothing else.

## How to export Word to PDF from the print dialogue, and why not to

File, Print, then the PDF menu in the bottom left, then Save as PDF. Every Mac app has it, and it works when nothing else does. The cost is that it goes through the macOS print pipeline, which has no concept of a link, a bookmark or a tag. Every URL becomes coloured underlined text that does nothing when clicked, and the table of contents becomes a list of page numbers to type in.

The one thing the print route does that Save As cannot is print a page range. For two pages out of forty, print those pages to PDF and accept the dead links, or convert the whole document and cut it down afterwards, which keeps the links on the pages you keep.

## Fonts, layout and the Mac

Both Save As options embed the fonts the document uses, so a PDF made on the Mac looks the same on a Windows PC. The exception is a font that is installed on the Mac but not licensed for embedding, which Word substitutes and warns about. If a colleague on Windows says the PDF looks different, the checks in [Word to PDF without losing formatting](https://pdfpix.com/guides/word-to-pdf-without-losing-formatting/) apply on a Mac as well.

Dead links after a Best for printing export are a Word version issue rather than a document issue. [Word to PDF hyperlinks not working](https://pdfpix.com/guides/keep-hyperlinks-when-converting-word-to-pdf/) covers the fix and the way to add links back afterwards.

## How to save a Word doc as a PDF on a Mac without opening Word

Pages can open a .docx and export it to PDF from the File menu, and the result keeps hyperlinks. It uses Pages' layout engine, so tables and numbered lists can move, and any Word feature Pages lacks is dropped with a warning at import. Quick Look and Preview cannot convert a Word file at all. LibreOffice does the same as Pages with a closer match to Word's layout.

The browser converter is the fourth option and the only one of the four that reopens its own output and counts the text before you see it. More Mac and Windows guides are listed under [PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint help](https://pdfpix.com/guides/office/).

## Questions and answers

### Where is Export to PDF in Word for Mac?

There is no Export command. Use File, Save As, set the File Format to PDF, and choose one of the two options that appear. Or open the .docx in Word to PDF in the browser.

### Does Best for electronic distribution send my document to Microsoft?

Yes. The dialogue says it uses Microsoft's online service, which means the .docx is sent to Microsoft to be converted.

### Which Mac export keeps the hyperlinks?

Best for electronic distribution always does. Best for printing does in the current Word app but not in Word 2016 builds. The browser converter does. The macOS print dialogue never does.

### Can I make a PDF from a Word file on a Mac without Microsoft Word?

Yes. Word to PDF converts the .docx in the browser tab and checks the result. Pages opens a .docx and exports PDF with working links, though the layout follows Pages rather than Word.

### Why does my Mac PDF have no sidebar outline?

Bookmarks come only from the Best for electronic distribution export. The other routes, including the browser converter, write none, so Preview's sidebar shows thumbnails only.

### Which Mac route keeps the file on the machine and keeps the links?

The browser converter. Best for printing keeps the file local but older builds drop links. Best for electronic distribution keeps links but sends the file to Microsoft.

## Related pages

- [Word to PDF](https://pdfpix.com/word-to-pdf/): Turn a Word document into a PDF that opens the same on every device. The file stays in your browser. No upload, no account needed.
- [Convert Word to PDF](https://pdfpix.com/guides/convert-word-to-pdf/): Save a Word document as a PDF, with its hyperlinks and heading bookmarks intact. Free, in your browser, with Word to PDF.
- [Word to PDF without losing formatting](https://pdfpix.com/guides/word-to-pdf-without-losing-formatting/): Stop fonts, spacing and page breaks from shifting when Word becomes a PDF. Free, in your browser, with Word to PDF.
- [Word to PDF hyperlinks not working](https://pdfpix.com/guides/keep-hyperlinks-when-converting-word-to-pdf/): Keep clickable links when a Word document is saved as a PDF. Free, in your browser, with Word to PDF.
- [PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint help](https://pdfpix.com/guides/office/): Find the right guide for PDFs inside Excel, Word and other software. Every guide on the job, sorted by the problem you have.