Text to PDF Converter

Step by step

1. Type or paste your text into the box above. The line under the box counts characters and words as you type.
2. Pick a font size. 10, 12, 14, 16 or 18 pt. 12 pt is selected at the start.
3. Pick a page size. A4 is used in most countries. Letter and Legal are the usual sizes in the United States and Canada.
4. Pick a margin. Narrow is 12.7 mm (half an inch), Normal is 25.4 mm (1 inch), and Wide is 38.1 mm (1.5 inches). The same margin is used on all four sides.
5. Click Convert to PDF. The file downloads as text-to-pdf.pdf. Plain English text is ready at once. If your text has other letters, such as Nepali or Russian, the first PDF takes a few seconds while a font downloads. Rename the file to something clear before you send it.

Which languages work

If your text has only English and Western European letters, the tool uses the built-in Helvetica font and makes the PDF at once. If your text has any other letters, the tool downloads the free Noto Sans font one time and uses it for the whole PDF, so the English words match. This is about 0.4 MB for Nepali or Hindi and about 0.6 MB for Russian or Greek. Only the letters you used are put inside the PDF, so the file stays small. A page of Nepali text is usually under 10 KB.

Nepali and Hindi are written in the Devanagari script. In this script, letters join and vowel signs move. For example, क + ् + ष becomes क्ष, and the sign ि is typed after the letter but drawn before it (कि). The tool uses the font's own rules for this, so words such as क्षत्रिय, त्रिशूल, कर्म and प्रिय look the way they should.

If your text has characters from the right column, the tool does not make a broken PDF. It shows a message with the characters it cannot print. You can remove them from your text, or click Make the PDF without them. For those scripts, paste the text into a word processor, such as Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice, and use Print and then Save as PDF. Those programs use fonts from your device.

Copying Nepali or Hindi text out of the PDF. The printed page always looks right. But a PDF stores letters in the order they are drawn, not the order you typed them. So when you copy Nepali or Hindi text from the PDF, some PDF readers put a vowel sign in the wrong place. For example, बिदुर can come out as िबदुर. The PDF also stores the correct text for readers that support this, but many readers ignore it. English, European, Russian and Greek text copies back correctly.

How your text is placed on the page

• Lines wrap at spaces. Long lines are broken between words to fit the page width. A very long word or web address with no spaces is cut at the edge and continues on the next line. A letter is never split from its vowel signs.
• Your line breaks are kept. Each press of Enter starts a new line, and empty lines stay empty. This is how you make paragraphs. A tab becomes four spaces.
• New pages are added by themselves when a page is full.
• All text looks the same. Black text, left-aligned, one size. The font is Helvetica for English and Western European text, and Noto Sans when other letters are used. There is no bold, italic, heading, page number, header or footer.
• Nepali and Hindi get more line space. Vowel signs sit above and below the letters, so the lines are further apart. That way the signs of two lines do not touch.
• The text is real text. You can select, copy and search it in a PDF reader.

These numbers help you plan. The characters per line were measured with ordinary English sentences, so your text may fit a few characters more or less.

Good uses

A simple letter or note to print or attach

Write a short letter, notice or list and turn it into a PDF that looks the same on every device. A4 with 12 pt and Normal margins gives a standard look.

Large print for easy reading

Choose 18 pt with Wide margins for instructions or a speech you need to read from paper. Each line is short, and the text is large.

Saving plain text in a fixed form

Notes, meeting minutes or a list copied from an app can be kept as a PDF. Keep the original text file too, because a PDF is harder to edit.

Not a good fit: code, logs and tables

Helvetica and Noto Sans are not fixed-width fonts. Letters have different widths, so columns made with spaces will not line up. Tables typed with spaces or tabs will look uneven.

Common mistakes

• Not opening the PDF before sending it. Always check it, especially if your text has names, symbols or words from other languages.
• Pasting formatted text and expecting the format. Bold, colors, links and pictures from a web page or Word file are lost. Only the characters are kept. If your text is in a .docx file, Word to PDF keeps bold, italic, headings, lists and tables, though not the exact layout.
• Typing Markdown. Symbols like **bold** and # Heading are printed as they are. They do not become bold text or headings.
• Using the wrong paper size. A Letter-size PDF printed on A4 paper, or the other way round, may be shrunk or cut. Pick the size of the paper you will print on.
• Clicking Convert with an empty box. You will see Please enter some text first.

If the PDF is one part of a bigger document, join it with other files in Merge PDF. To check the length of your text before converting, use Word Counter.