Best Way to Convert Word Document To PDF – OpenOffice

There are a lot of of freeware out there to convert your existing MS Word document to Adobe PDF but I found that the easiest way is to use the OpenOffice. What you need to do is to open the MS Word with the OpenOffice Writer tool and export it to PDF. That’s it!


Steps to Export to PDF

(1) Open Your MS Word document with OpenOffice Writer
(2) Go to “File” -> “Export as PDF…” You will see the following screen:

(3) You can play around with plenty of options here or just let it be the default option.
(4) Click “Export” button to generate the PDF.


Useful Export PDF Options

Wait a minute! There are few things that I think that might be useful to you.

• Export Note: This is especially useful if you want to retain the notes in your slides
  
• Set Permission Password: This is probably the key reason why people wants to convert their document to PDF. Yes, security! You don’t want people can simply copy your content. Here is the place you set the security in the “Security Tab” while you’re exporting your document to PDF. 

Note: Set Open Password is used to encrypt your PDF so it can't be open at all. I don't think this is something common people will usually do.

Steps to Setup the Permission

(1) Click on “Security” tab in the PDF Options while you’re exporting your document to PDF
(2) Click on “Set permission password”. Follow the on-screen instruction to set the password.
(3) After that, you will see the screen below. Of course the highest level of security is to:

• Set “Not Permitted” in the changes options - NOT allow to made changes.
• Uncheck/unselect “Enable copying of content” - NOT allow to copy.
• Uncheck/unselect “Enable text access for accessibility tool” - NOT really sure what this is but it seems like same with above (which is not allow you to copy).

P/S: Hope this is useful to you especially the security feature. I have tried it myself and it is pretty simple. Oh yes, this is completely FREE too. You can download OpenOffice here. Have fun!