I have a Word documented with embedded PDFs as figures I need to convert to PDF. I was expecting the Word-generated PDF document to embed the PDF figures as is (e.g. as done by Latex) and therefore keep their original format and quality. This does not seem to be the case as Word converts the embedded PDF figures to PNGs (checked generated PDF with with Linux util pdfimages). Apart from Word, none of the online converters I tried so far (e.g. ) seem to be able to support this feature so I wonder if this is a Word limitation. Is there a way to ask Word not to rasterize the embedded PDFs to PNGs? Are there other software that can otherwise be used to achieve my goal?
How to reproduce (Windows 10)
- Download a pdf image -- e.g.
- Open Word, then Insert > Object > Object > Create from File > Browse. Then select the previosuly downloaded PDF image. This will appear (blurry) in your Word document. This is fine as Microsoft Office applications under Windows provide no real mechanism for placing PDF content at full quality.
- Save/Export the PDF by either (a) File > Export > Create PDF/XPS or (b) File > Print > Microsoft Print to PDF.
The Word generated PDF will show a rasterized version of the original PDF image. In Linux you can easily check the embedded images in a PDF with pdfimages in my case doing pdfimages -all wordtopdf.pdf /tmp/out shows the embedded imaged is *.png.
Relevant Word options: Image size and quality is set to "Do not compress images in file" and "High fidelity".
1 Answer
As Word displays correctly the document and its embedded PDFs, a simple solution is to print the document to PDF.
You could choose as the printer "Microsoft Print to PDF", or any other PDF printer that you have installed. Choose the PDF printer whose results are good enough.
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