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Creating a PDF from text, Markdown or a Word document: what FileXvert produces, and its limits
PDF is the exchange format par excellence: it looks the same everywhere, does not get edited by accident and prints faithfully. FileXvert can create one from a text file, a Markdown file or a Word document, without sending anything to a server. But it does so in a very specific way, which is worth knowing before you use it for an important document. Here is what the conversion actually produces, with figures.
A text PDF, not a copy of the layout
Whatever the source, FileXvert builds a text PDF: it reads the content, then lays it out itself on A4 pages, in 11-point Helvetica, with 1.5 line spacing and margins of about 1.8 cm. Lines that are too long are broken between words, each paragraph is separated from the next by a gap, and a new page starts automatically when the previous one is full.
In practice, this means the presentation of your original document is not reproduced. For a text file, that is no loss, since it has none. For Markdown or a Word document, the difference matters, and you need to know about it.
What happens to each type of file
The three sources follow the same path, with a different first step:
- Text (.txt): the content is laid out as it is, with its line breaks.
- Markdown (.md): formatting symbols are removed before layout. The hash signs of headings, the asterisks of bold and italics and the link syntax disappear; the link text remains, but not its address. Headings are therefore not enlarged: they appear as ordinary paragraphs.
- Word (.docx): the text of each paragraph is extracted, then laid out. The Word document's styles, colours, tables, images, headers, footers and page numbers are not carried over.
What we measured
To give orders of magnitude, we converted the text of one of our French guides, about 900 words with accents, quotation marks and dashes, along with several short texts containing special characters.
| Text converted | Result | PDF size |
|---|---|---|
| 905-word guide in French | 3 A4 pages | 5.9 KB |
| Accents, « quotes », €, —, …, œ | All kept | 0.9 KB |
| Arrow →, emoji, Chinese characters | Characters removed, rest of the text kept | — |
| Markdown with headings, bold and a link | Plain text, symbols removed | 0.9 KB |
The size is remarkably small: under 6 KB for three pages, because Helvetica is one of PDF's standard fonts and does not need to be embedded in the file. That is ideal for an email attachment or an upload form with a size limit.
The downside of this standard font is its character set, limited to the Western Latin alphabet. French accents, the euro sign and typographic quotation marks are supported; arrows, emojis, mathematical symbols and non-Latin scripts are not. Until our fix in October 2026, a single one of these characters made the whole conversion fail; they are now simply removed, and the rest of the document is produced normally. So proofread the PDF if your text contains any.
When it is the right tool
This conversion is made for documents whose content matters more than their presentation:
- Turning notes, minutes or plain text into a clean document to pass on or print.
- Freezing a text so that it can no longer be changed by mistake, for example an approved version of house rules or a list of instructions.
- Getting a very light PDF to attach to an email or upload to an official website.
- Creating a PDF from a device without a word processor, such as a tablet or a shared computer, without installing software or sending the document online.
When to use something else
If the layout is part of the message, for example a CV, a letterhead, a quote with a table or an illustrated report, FileXvert's conversion will not do: it would keep only the text. Use your software's export function instead: in Word, Save As then PDF; in LibreOffice, Export as PDF; in Google Docs, Download then PDF. These exports faithfully reproduce the layout, fonts included.
For a Markdown document meant for a polished layout, a dedicated editor or a tool such as Pandoc will turn headings and lists into real typography. FileXvert remains the fastest way to get a readable, lightweight PDF when the text is all you need.