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Submitting Your Dissertation, Thesis, Or PDE: Converting to PDF

This LibGuide will provide guidance on how to prepare and submit your dissertation for publication by ProQuest Dissertation Publishing.

Converting to PDF

The process of submission to PQDP is electronic and requires you to convert your document to the PDF format.

  • If you use Word 2007 on Windows, that version of Word has no built-in PDF converter. However, Microsoft has a PDF Converter Plugin for download that the Library recommends highly.
  • If you use Word 2010 or Word 2013 on Windows, that version of Word has a PDF converter built-in, so you're ready to go.
  • If you use any recent version of Word on Apple's OS X, there's always been a PDF converter available, so you're ready to proceed.

Once you have a Word to PDF converter available, you can simply use Word's Save As function to save your document as a PDF, but please read on ...

 

 It is very important to embed the fonts used in your document into your Word file before you convert it to PDF. This will ensure that your document always appears exactly as you intended. 

The graphic below shows how the recommended settings should be set in Word 2007; they don't look remarkably different in Word 2010 or Word 2013. You access Word's options by clicking on the big round icon in the upper-left corner of the Word window and then clicking on the Word Options button in the lower right of the dialog box.

Be sure to choose "Embed only the characters used in the document" and "Do not embed common system fonts" as shown. Otherwise, you will embed all versions of every character in the fonts you use in your document, which will greatly and unnecessarily increase the size of the file.

 After converting your document, you should check it closely to determine whether any aspect of formatting became problematic during conversion.  You should resolve formatting problems in your Word document and convert to PDF again, remembering to embed fonts each time, before starting the submission process.  Once PQDP has accepted your dissertation for publication, they will assess a fee for you to make further changes in your archived document.