How to Print PDF with Bookmarks: Complete Guide for Word & Office

What Are PDF Bookmarks and Why They Matter

PDF bookmarks are navigation markers embedded in a PDF file that let readers jump directly to specific sections, chapters, or headings. They appear in the bookmarks panel of PDF viewers like Adobe Acrobat Reader and create a clickable table of contents for long documents.

When you print or convert a Word document to PDF, bookmarks are not always carried over automatically. Without them, a long report, manuscript, or manual becomes far harder to navigate — readers must scroll through every page to find the section they want.

Bookmarks matter for several reasons:

• Navigation: Readers can jump straight to a chapter or section without scrolling.
• Accessibility: Screen readers and assistive technology use bookmark structure to help visually impaired users navigate the document.
• Professional presentation: A PDF with a proper bookmark hierarchy looks polished and is easier to review, especially for legal, academic, or publishing documents.
• Print publishing: For print-ready PDFs, bookmark structure often mirrors the heading hierarchy used for interior layout — getting it right during the Word-to-PDF step saves work downstream.

How to Print to PDF from Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has two built-in methods for converting documents to PDF. Both work on Windows and Mac, though the option labels differ slightly.

Method 1: File > Save As PDF

Method 2: File > Export > Create PDF/XPS (Windows)

Preserving Bookmarks When Converting Word to PDF

The key to preserving bookmarks is using Word's built-in heading styles — Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 — rather than manually bolding or enlarging text. When Word exports to PDF, it maps heading styles to the bookmark hierarchy automatically. Manually formatted text has no style tag for Word to read.

If your PDF is missing bookmarks after conversion, the most common reasons are:

• Headings were formatted manually (bold, larger font) rather than using Heading styles.
• The Options dialog was not opened before saving, so the Create bookmarks checkbox was never enabled.
• A third-party PDF printer was used instead of Word's native export, and the printer did not pass structural tags through.
• The document was saved as PDF using a compatibility mode that strips tags.

To fix a document with manually formatted headings: select each heading, then apply the correct Heading style from the Styles panel. Once all headings use proper styles, re-export to PDF with the Options dialog open.

Printing PDF with Hyperlinks Intact

Hyperlinks in Word documents are preserved as clickable links in the PDF export by default, provided you use Save As or Export rather than printing to a physical PDF driver. The key setting is enabling Document structure tags for accessibility in the Options dialog — this ensures link metadata is written to the PDF file.

If hyperlinks appear as underlined blue text in your PDF but are not clickable:

• The PDF was produced via a physical printer driver (e.g., Microsoft Print to PDF) rather than the Save As / Export path. Printer drivers render the visual appearance but do not write PDF link annotations.
• The PDF viewer is in a restricted mode. Try opening the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader and enabling interactive features.
• The link destination uses a path that is not valid on the reader's machine (common with local file references).

For web URLs and email addresses, Word's native PDF export reliably produces clickable links in the output file. For cross-document links (links that jump to another PDF), these require post-export editing in Acrobat.

Printing Multiple Word Documents to PDF

Batch converting multiple Word files to PDF can be done several ways, depending on the number of files and your available tools.

Word's built-in batch: open and export individually

For small batches (under 10 files), the most reliable method is opening each Word file, using File > Save As > PDF with the Options dialog, and repeating. This ensures the correct bookmark settings are applied to every file.

PowerShell (Windows) for larger batches

Windows users can automate the Word-to-PDF conversion using a PowerShell script that opens each DOCX file via the Word COM object and exports it. This preserves heading-based bookmarks because it runs through Word's export engine rather than a print driver.

Microsoft Word macro

A Word VBA macro can loop through all files in a folder, open each one, and save as PDF with the correct settings. This is the most reliable method for maintaining consistent bookmark output across a large file set.

Printing PDF with Comments and Annotations

Word's review comments (margin annotations) are separate from the main text and require a specific export setting to appear in the PDF output.

To include Word comments in the PDF:

For printing comments in the margin on a physical printer, use Word's Print dialog and set Print All Pages > Print Markup to include the comment balloons in the printout.

In Adobe Acrobat, you can print PDF comments by going to File > Print and enabling Document and Markups (or Document and Comments) under Comments and Forms.

Converting PDF Back to Word Format

There are several ways to convert an existing PDF back to an editable Word document:

• Microsoft Word (built-in): Open Word, choose File > Open, and select the PDF file. Word will attempt to convert it to an editable DOCX. This works well for simple text-heavy PDFs but may lose complex formatting.
• Adobe Acrobat: File > Export To > Microsoft Word. Acrobat's conversion engine is more accurate for complex layouts and preserves more formatting than Word's built-in converter.
• Online tools: Various free web tools (Smallpdf, ILovePDF, Adobe online) convert PDF to DOCX. Quality varies depending on the PDF's complexity and whether it is text-based or scanned.

Note that scanned or image-based PDFs require optical character recognition (OCR) before they can be converted to editable text. Word's built-in converter and most online tools do not perform OCR — you need Acrobat Pro or a dedicated OCR application for those files.

Using PDF Printers for Word Documents

A PDF printer is a virtual printer driver installed on your system that captures document output and writes it to a PDF file instead of sending it to paper. Common examples include Microsoft Print to PDF (built into Windows 10 and 11) and third-party drivers like PDFCreator or Foxit PDF Creator.

PDF printers are convenient but have a significant limitation: they produce a visual rendering of the document rather than a structured PDF. This means:

• No bookmarks: PDF printer output does not read Word heading styles, so no bookmark hierarchy is created.
• No clickable hyperlinks: Links are rendered as blue underlined text but are not written as PDF link annotations.
• No accessibility tags: Screen readers cannot navigate the document structure.

For most print publishing and distribution purposes, Word's native Save As PDF is strongly preferred over a PDF printer driver. Use a PDF printer only when you need a quick visual copy and do not require navigation features.

Printing with Draft Watermarks and Print-Ready Settings

Adding a "DRAFT" watermark to a PDF before sharing for review is straightforward in both Word and Acrobat.

Adding a watermark in Word before PDF export:

For print-ready PDFs intended for submission to KDP or IngramSpark, watermarks must be removed before the final upload. DocToPrint produces clean, watermark-free print interior PDFs; preview versions are watermarked so you can check formatting before committing a credit.

Printing Microsoft Forms to PDF

Microsoft Forms is an online survey and quiz tool — its responses and layouts are not the same as Word forms or fillable PDF forms. Printing Microsoft Forms output as PDF typically means one of the following scenarios:

Printing form responses:

In Microsoft Forms, go to the Responses tab, click the three-dot menu, and choose Open in Excel. From Excel, you can then print or Save As PDF using the standard Office export flow.

Printing the form itself (for paper distribution):

Open the form in a browser, use the browser's Print function (Ctrl+P / Cmd+P), and select Save as PDF as the destination. This captures the visual layout of the form. Note that the resulting PDF is not an interactive fillable form — it is a flat image of the form fields.

Creating fillable PDF forms from Word:

If you want a PDF with actual fillable fields (checkboxes, text inputs), the standard workflow is to build the form in Word using Developer tab form controls, then export to PDF. Acrobat Pro can add interactive form fields after the fact, or you can use a dedicated forms tool like JotForm or Typeform for digital-first form distribution.

Frequently Asked Questions