Text to PDF — Free Online Tool on Toolpile
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About Text to PDF
This tool turns plain text into a PDF in your browser — no fonts to install, no formatting choices to make. Worth saying upfront: this is *text → PDF*, not *Microsoft Word .docx → PDF*. If you have a .docx file with formatting, see the FAQ for the right path. If you have plain text (notes, code, an email body, a draft) and want a clean PDF, you're in the right place.
Paste text or drop a .txt/.md file; the tool generates an A4 PDF using Helvetica at the font size you pick (8-72 pt), with 50 pt margins and 1.4× line spacing. Long lines wrap at the right margin; blank lines stay blank; multi-page output is automatic. The whole thing runs in your browser via pdf-lib — nothing is uploaded.
What it intentionally doesn't do: parse .docx files, preserve bold/italic, render headings differently from body text, embed images, or honour bullet styles. Those features all require a real word-processor engine on a server (LibreOffice headless, Pandoc, MS Word service). Browser PDFs from plain text exist for the case where you don't have any of that and want a readable PDF in 5 seconds — like printing a chat transcript, a code snippet, or pasted notes from a Slack thread.
If your input is a .docx with formatting you care about, the cleanest free path is: open the file in Google Docs (drag-drop into drive.google.com), then File → Download → PDF Document. Google's renderer handles the .docx XML correctly. Microsoft Word for the web (office.com) has the same export. This tool is for when you've already lost or don't have the .docx — when you've got plain text in a textarea or a .txt file.
Default font size is 12 pt — the standard for body text in legal documents, business letters, and most printed material. At 12 pt with the default 1.4× line spacing, a single A4 page holds about 38 lines of wrapped text (roughly 450-500 words depending on width). Drop to 10 pt to fit ~55 lines per page (700+ words); push to 14 pt for accessibility/large-print at ~33 lines per page.
Code or monospace-looking text will render in Helvetica (proportional), so column alignment in tables or ASCII art will break. There's no monospace option in this version — for code listings, paste into a tool that exports to PDF with a monospace font (Carbon, Ray.so) or use the Markdown Preview tool first if your code is fenced.
All text is black on white. There's no colour, no headers/footers, no page numbers — for page numbers on the result, run the output through the Page Numbers PDF tool on this site. The point of the tool is speed and predictability, not styling.
Can this convert a .docx file from Word?
No. The tool reads files as plain text — a .docx is a zip archive of XML, so it'll come out as binary garbage if dropped here. To convert .docx properly: (1) open it in Google Docs and File → Download → PDF Document, or (2) open in Word/Pages and use Save As → PDF, or (3) use a desktop tool like LibreOffice (offline, free). All three preserve formatting; this tool would not.
Does it preserve bold, italic, or headings?
No — input is treated as plain text, so any markup characters (asterisks for bold, underscores for italic, # for headings) appear as-is in the PDF. If you want Markdown rendered, use the Markdown Preview tool first to confirm the output, then screenshot or print-to-PDF from your browser. A future version may add Markdown-aware rendering.
Why is my code unreadable in the PDF?
Helvetica is a proportional font, so spaces and characters don't align in columns. For code, switch to a tool that supports monospace export (Carbon.now.sh, Ray.so) or screenshot from a code editor. Plain prose, lists, and notes look fine in Helvetica.
Are my files uploaded?
No. PDF generation runs entirely in your browser via pdf-lib. There is no server-side processing. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the converter still works.
How big can the input be?
Browser memory limits this to roughly 500,000-1,000,000 characters of text comfortably (a long novel). Past that, generation slows to seconds and the tab may become sluggish. For huge text dumps, split into chapters and merge the resulting PDFs with the Merge PDF tool.
Can I add page numbers, headers, or a cover page?
Not in this tool — it's deliberately minimal. After generating, run the result through Page Numbers PDF for numbering, Watermark PDF for a header/footer line, or Merge PDF to add a cover sheet from a separate one-page PDF.
What about non-Latin characters (Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic)?
Helvetica's standard encoding covers Latin characters, basic accented characters (most European languages), and a handful of symbols. It does not include CJK, Cyrillic, or Arabic glyphs — those will render as missing-glyph boxes (□). Full Unicode rendering requires a font subset embed which Helvetica doesn't provide. For multilingual output, use a tool that embeds a Unicode-coverage font.