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Text to PDF

Turn a plain text file, or anything you paste, into a PDF. Nothing leaves your device.

HonestPDF turns plain text into a PDF entirely in the browser. It reads .txt files in UTF-8 and UTF-16, keeps your line breaks and indentation if you want them, and produces real selectable text. Nothing is uploaded, and the text is never read as markdown, so a hash or an asterisk stays a hash or an asterisk.

0 lines, 0 characters

How it should be laid out

Paper

Type size

Margins

On for a poem, an address or a log. Off to let hard wrapped paragraphs reflow to the page.

Read in this tabNothing is uploadedReal text, not screenshots

What this does that a print dialog does not

  • ✓Your line breaks, your choice: keep every one of them for a poem, an address or a log, or let a hard wrapped paragraph reflow to the width of the page. Most converters pick one and do not tell you.
  • ✓Reads the file as it was actually saved: UTF-8, UTF-8 with a byte order mark, and UTF-16 from a Windows editor. A UTF-16 file read as UTF-8 converts perfectly and comes out with a blank between every letter.
  • ✓Any language: Turkish, Greek and Cyrillic are set as text, and scripts the embedded fonts cannot write are drawn with your own device's fonts instead of quietly disappearing.
  • ✓Nothing is uploaded: the file is read in your browser and the PDF is built there. No account, no size ceiling imposed by a server, no copy of your notes anywhere.

What happens to your text

Nothing leaves your device. The file is read in the tab, laid out in the tab, and saved from the tab. There is no upload, no account, and no record of what you converted, because there is no server involved at any point.

Questions about text to PDF

Will my line breaks be kept?
If you want them. Leave the setting on and every line of the file is a line on the page, indentation included, which is what a poem, an address, a set of lyrics or a log needs. Turn it off and lines inside a paragraph run together and reflow to the page, which is what a novel wrapped at column seventy needs.
Is my text read as markdown?
No, and that is deliberate. A line that starts with a hash means a hash, an asterisk means an asterisk, and an underscore in a filename stays where it is. If you do want markdown formatting, the Markdown to PDF tool is the one for that.
What about a file that is not in English?
It works. Latin, Greek and Cyrillic are set as real text. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Devanagari, Arabic and Hebrew are drawn with the fonts your own device has, so the words reach the page instead of vanishing without an error, which is what happens when a PDF library meets a character its font lacks.
How large a file can it take?
A few megabytes, which is a few hundred thousand lines. The whole thing is typeset in your browser tab, so past that the tab stops responding rather than finishing, and the tool says so instead of trying.
Is the text in the PDF selectable?
Yes. It is set as real text rather than drawn as pictures, so you can search the PDF, copy from it, and have a screen reader read it aloud. It also keeps the file small.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Your text is read and typeset by JavaScript in this tab. There is no server to upload to, which is also why there is no account and no limit on how many files you convert.
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Text turned into a PDF? Number the pages before printing, merge it with the rest of the file, or shrink it for an upload form that will not take the size.

You might also need:

Markdown to PDF
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Add Page Numbers
Merge