How do I keep tracked changes visible in the exported PDF?

In Word, leave Track Changes on, then in the Save As PDF dialog click "Options" and tick "Document showing markup" (sometimes labelled "Print Markup"). The PDF will show inserted text underlined, deleted text struck through, and revision authors named in the margin balloons exactly as they appear in Word. Without that option, Word silently exports the "Final" view — the clean, post-change version. Most reviewers expect markup visible; most clients expect it removed; the option lets you pick.

Will my Word comments appear as PDF annotations or in the margin?

Both options exist. The default Word PDF export renders comments in margin balloons that match the on-screen layout — visible as static graphics in the PDF, but not editable. Alternatively, the export can place comments in a separate page-by-page list at the end of the document; this is cleaner for long documents but loses the visual association with the highlighted text. Some advanced exporters (Adobe Acrobat's Word plug-in) can also convert Word comments into native PDF sticky-note annotations that the recipient can reply to in Acrobat — useful for multi-round review cycles.

Will my Word headings show up as clickable PDF bookmarks?

Yes, if you tick "Create bookmarks using: Headings" in the Save As PDF Options dialog. The PDF will have a clickable outline tree in the viewer sidebar with one entry per Heading 1, nested children for Heading 2 and 3, and so on. This is one of the highest-leverage settings for navigable PDFs and one of the most-often-skipped. Accessibility software (screen readers, voice control) also relies on the outline for navigation.

How do I produce a Word-to-PDF export with no leaked metadata?

Three steps. (1) Accept all changes and delete all comments to remove the visible review trail. (2) Run File → Info → Inspect Document → Document Inspector and remove personal information, document properties, hidden text, and any embedded objects. (3) Export to PDF with "Document properties" unchecked under Options. The resulting PDF contains the visible content only — no author name in metadata, no review history, no hidden revisions. Recommended for any document going outside your organisation.

Are confidential Word documents safe with a free online converter?

Only if the converter runs client-side. ScoutMyTool's Word-to-PDF tool runs entirely in your browser tab — your .docx is parsed locally with mammoth.js and JSZip, and the PDF is composed with pdf-lib. Nothing transits a third-party server. Server-based converters (Smallpdf, iLovePDF, Adobe online) upload the file, run LibreOffice or a proprietary engine on their infrastructure, and stream back the PDF. For employment letters, legal drafts, internal financial communications or any document with PII, the client-side path is the only one that keeps the data off external infrastructure.

My exported PDF looks different from how Word displays the document — why?

Three most common causes. (a) Font substitution because a font in the document is not embedded — usually a custom or licensed typeface. Fix: switch to a font whose license allows embedding, or check "Embed fonts in the file" in Word's Save options. (b) Image compression because Word's default PDF export downsamples images to 220 DPI; fine for screen reading but lossy for high-detail photos. Fix: under Save As PDF → Options, choose "Standard (publishing online and printing)" instead of "Minimum size (publishing online)". (c) Page size mismatch — Word's document size and the export page size differ. Fix: in Page Layout, set the document size to match the target PDF size (typically Letter or A4).

Should I use PDF/A for the exported file?

For long-term archival — yes. PDF/A-1 is the ISO 19005-1 standard for long-term preservation of electronic documents, designed so the PDF will render the same way in fifty years as it does today. It bans dynamic content (JavaScript, audio, video, embedded fonts that depend on system installation) and requires self-contained fonts. The export takes slightly longer and the resulting file is somewhat larger, but for legal records, regulatory filings, or anything you might need to read after the original software is gone, PDF/A is worth picking. For everyday sharing, standard PDF is fine.

Word to PDF online — keep tracked changes and comments (2026)

10 min read

Word to PDF online — keep tracked changes and comments (2026)

By ScoutMyTool Editorial Team · Last updated: 2026-05-19

I once sent a contract draft to a client as a PDF, confident I had everything right — and a week later got an apologetic note from their counsel that read, in essence, "the PDF you sent us shows your private internal comments calling clause 7 ridiculous". The Word source had three rounds of red-pen comments in the margin that I had never accepted, never deleted, and had no idea would also export when I clicked Save As PDF. They had. That kind of mistake is so common it has a name — "track changes leak" — and the fix is two checkboxes in the export dialog. This article covers those checkboxes, plus the rest of what survives a Word-to-PDF export and the choices that matter for drafts, final versions, and archival copies.

Why Word → PDF is the simplest format conversion

Word documents (.docx) are defined by the ISO/IEC 29500 Office Open XML standard, specifically the WordProcessingML schema — paragraphs flow top to bottom with the same conceptual model as a PDF page's text content.¹ That structural similarity is why Word-to-PDF is essentially lossless for visible content: there is no animation to drop (unlike PowerPoint), no two-dimensional grid to flatten (unlike Excel), and no formula model to replace with values (unlike spreadsheets). The PDF page model and the Word document model both think about text-and-paragraphs the same way.

What you do have to think about, though, is what to show in the export. Tracked changes, comments, hidden text, and the document outline are all explicitly configurable — Word has sensible defaults but they are not the right defaults for every scenario.

What survives the export, and what does not

Element	Survives?	Notes
Body text and paragraph formatting	Yes	Fonts, sizes, weights, paragraph indents, line spacing — all preserved at high fidelity.
Headings (Heading 1, 2, 3)	Yes	Exported as PDF bookmark outline if "Create bookmarks using: Headings" is ticked. This is the clickable sidebar in PDF viewers.
Inline images	Yes	Embedded as XObject images. May be re-encoded as JPEG at the export quality setting.
Tracked changes (revision marks)	Optional	Included only if "Print Markup" is enabled. Off by default. See below for how to choose.
Comments and threaded notes	Optional	Included if "Comments" is ticked in the export options. Can render in margin (balloons) or as a separate page at end.
Hyperlinks (URL and intra-document)	Yes	External URLs become link annotations; cross-references and table-of-contents entries become internal "go to page" actions.
Footnotes and endnotes	Yes	Rendered at the bottom of the page (footnotes) or in a section at the end (endnotes), exactly as Word displays them.
Table of contents (Word-built)	Yes	Visible TOC text remains; intra-document links survive. Pair with the heading-derived bookmark outline for both visible and sidebar navigation.
Custom / licensed fonts	Conditional	Embedded only if the font's license allows embedding. Otherwise substituted on the reader's machine.
Form fields	Optional	Word legacy form controls export as AcroForm fields if "Create accessible PDF" is enabled; modern content controls have variable support.
Macros (.docm)	No	PDF has no equivalent. The visible content survives; the macro logic is dropped silently.

Six scenarios — and the right export settings for each

"Should tracked changes be visible?" is a per-purpose question rather than a global preference. Pick the scenario that matches your use case and apply the corresponding settings.

Scenario	Show tracked changes?	Show comments?	How
Sending a clean final version to a client	No	No	Accept all changes (Review → Accept → All), delete comments, then Save As PDF. Clean output, no review trail visible.
Sharing a draft for review	Yes	Yes	Leave tracked changes on, leave comments in place, enable "Print Markup" in Save As PDF options. The reviewer sees exactly what you see.
Archiving a draft snapshot for the record	Yes	Yes	Same as draft-for-review, plus pick PDF/A-1 output for long-term archival compliance.
Submitting to a publisher with house revisions visible	Yes	No	Leave tracked changes on, delete or hide comments, enable Print Markup. Some publishers require this so editorial decisions are auditable.
Legal redline disclosure (M&A documents)	Yes (with author attribution)	Optional	Leave tracked changes on, enable Print Markup, ensure author initials are visible in the markup. Counsel often requires this format for diligence.
Final published article without any review history	No	No	Accept changes, delete comments, then run File → Inspect Document → Document Inspector to strip residual metadata before exporting.

The five-step export workflow

Decide whether the PDF is a final, a draft, or an archive copy. Match the matrix above. The decision is the most important step and the one most people skip.
Adjust the source document accordingly. For final: accept changes, delete comments, optionally run Document Inspector. For draft: leave changes and comments in place. For archive: same as draft, plus pick PDF/A in the export format.
Open the export. Either File → Save As PDF in Word, or open ScoutMyTool's Word to PDF tool in your browser. The browser tool runs entirely client-side — your .docx is parsed locally and the PDF is composed locally, with no upload to any server.
Set export options. Tick "Create bookmarks using: Headings" for a clickable outline. Tick "Print Markup" if you want tracked changes visible. Tick "Document properties" off if the document might leak author/organisation metadata. Pick PDF/A if archiving.
Save and verify. Open the PDF in a viewer to confirm the markup state matches your intention. For draft PDFs, scan for "internal comments" before sending. For finals, scan for missed tracked changes. The thirty seconds spent on a verification pass prevents the embarrassing one-week-later email.

Headings → PDF bookmarks — the one setting most people miss

Word can export the document outline as a PDF bookmark tree — the clickable sidebar navigation in Adobe Reader, Apple Preview, Chrome, and every other reasonable PDF viewer. This is one of the highest-leverage settings for any multi-page document and the easiest to skip because it lives behind the "Options" button in the Save As dialog. Tick "Create bookmarks using: Headings" and the PDF acquires a clickable outline that mirrors the heading hierarchy of the source. Readers can jump to any section with one click — and screen readers expose the same outline to assistive technologies, which means accessibility compliance improves at the same time.

If the source document does not have proper Heading 1 / Heading 2 / Heading 3 styles applied, no outline is generated. The fix is to retroactively apply the styles in the source, or to use ScoutMyTool's auto-detect-from-headings tool on the resulting PDF to infer the outline from font size and weight.

The reverse direction (PDF → Word) is harder than it looks

PDF to Word is materially harder than Word to PDF because the PDF page model is a flat canvas of glyph positions, while the Word model is a structured flow of paragraphs, headings and styles. Converters can usually recover the text but struggle with multi-column layouts, embedded tables, and consistent paragraph styling. If you might ever need to re-edit the document, keep the original .docx — do not rely on round-tripping through PDF. ScoutMyTool's PDF to Word tool handles the reverse for clean single-column documents but degrades on complex layouts.

Word to PDF — the primary tool referenced.
PDF to Word — the reverse direction.
PDF to RTF — for export to a format every word processor understands.
PDF from document template — generate filled PDFs from a template + data.
Auto TOC from headings — add a bookmark outline after the fact.
Protect PDF — password-protect drafts before sending.
PDF table of contents generator — sister piece on outlines.
Excel to PDF — sister piece on spreadsheets.
PowerPoint to PDF — sister piece on slides.

Frequently asked questions

How do I keep tracked changes visible in the exported PDF?: In Word, leave Track Changes on, then in the Save As PDF dialog click "Options" and tick "Document showing markup" (sometimes labelled "Print Markup"). The PDF will show inserted text underlined, deleted text struck through, and revision authors named in the margin balloons exactly as they appear in Word. Without that option, Word silently exports the "Final" view — the clean, post-change version. Most reviewers expect markup visible; most clients expect it removed; the option lets you pick.
Will my Word comments appear as PDF annotations or in the margin?: Both options exist. The default Word PDF export renders comments in margin balloons that match the on-screen layout — visible as static graphics in the PDF, but not editable. Alternatively, the export can place comments in a separate page-by-page list at the end of the document; this is cleaner for long documents but loses the visual association with the highlighted text. Some advanced exporters (Adobe Acrobat's Word plug-in) can also convert Word comments into native PDF sticky-note annotations that the recipient can reply to in Acrobat — useful for multi-round review cycles.
Will my Word headings show up as clickable PDF bookmarks?: Yes, if you tick "Create bookmarks using: Headings" in the Save As PDF Options dialog. The PDF will have a clickable outline tree in the viewer sidebar with one entry per Heading 1, nested children for Heading 2 and 3, and so on. This is one of the highest-leverage settings for navigable PDFs and one of the most-often-skipped. Accessibility software (screen readers, voice control) also relies on the outline for navigation.
How do I produce a Word-to-PDF export with no leaked metadata?: Three steps. (1) Accept all changes and delete all comments to remove the visible review trail. (2) Run File → Info → Inspect Document → Document Inspector and remove personal information, document properties, hidden text, and any embedded objects. (3) Export to PDF with "Document properties" unchecked under Options. The resulting PDF contains the visible content only — no author name in metadata, no review history, no hidden revisions. Recommended for any document going outside your organisation.
Are confidential Word documents safe with a free online converter?: Only if the converter runs client-side. ScoutMyTool's Word-to-PDF tool runs entirely in your browser tab — your .docx is parsed locally with mammoth.js and JSZip, and the PDF is composed with pdf-lib. Nothing transits a third-party server. Server-based converters (Smallpdf, iLovePDF, Adobe online) upload the file, run LibreOffice or a proprietary engine on their infrastructure, and stream back the PDF. For employment letters, legal drafts, internal financial communications or any document with PII, the client-side path is the only one that keeps the data off external infrastructure.
My exported PDF looks different from how Word displays the document — why?: Three most common causes. (a) Font substitution because a font in the document is not embedded — usually a custom or licensed typeface. Fix: switch to a font whose license allows embedding, or check "Embed fonts in the file" in Word's Save options. (b) Image compression because Word's default PDF export downsamples images to 220 DPI; fine for screen reading but lossy for high-detail photos. Fix: under Save As PDF → Options, choose "Standard (publishing online and printing)" instead of "Minimum size (publishing online)". (c) Page size mismatch — Word's document size and the export page size differ. Fix: in Page Layout, set the document size to match the target PDF size (typically Letter or A4).
Should I use PDF/A for the exported file?: For long-term archival — yes. PDF/A-1 is the ISO 19005-1 standard for long-term preservation of electronic documents, designed so the PDF will render the same way in fifty years as it does today. It bans dynamic content (JavaScript, audio, video, embedded fonts that depend on system installation) and requires self-contained fonts. The export takes slightly longer and the resulting file is somewhat larger, but for legal records, regulatory filings, or anything you might need to read after the original software is gone, PDF/A is worth picking. For everyday sharing, standard PDF is fine.

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