The 100% free PDF Creator and PDF Convertor supplied by PDF24.org works with all Windows programs and has a lot of features you wouldn't expect from free software: create PDF files from almost any Windows application, re-order pages, merge, split, and password-protect your existing PDF files.

PDF - Portable Document Format

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a format designed to make exchanging documents easier. It was developed by Adobe Systems. The creation of PDF is very easy with our free PDF Creator. Find out how you can create PDF from any application which has the 'print' option.

PDF & Word - can't be simpler

MS Word is one of the most used text processing applications and PDF is the most used format to publish documents. Using our free PDF software you can continue to use Word or any other text processor to write your documents and still publish them as PDFs. Click here to learn how to convert word to PDF.

Free PDF Creator to create PDF

We provide a free, easy to use, PDF creator for Windows, to create PDF files from any application by using a virtual printer. The new version of our PDF creator has a lot of useful features. Go to the PDF creator download page and download the PDF creator for free.

Document to PDF Converter

There are two ways to convert documents to PDF using the PDF24 tools: Use our online PDF converter to upload your documents to pdf24.org and we send back the converted PDF to you. Download and install our PDF Creator software to create PDF on your PC.

PDF Download

Our free PDF creator software is recommended by the German computer magazine "ComputerBILD". It is widely used and because there is only the free version you don't have to worry about any feature restrictions. Download it now and try it out!

Create PDF files in an easy way

Our free software project gives you a powerful tool to create PDF files. The tool is very easy to use and you can create PDF documents from almost any application. Furthermore, the tool can not only create PDF files but also edit existing ones.

PDF printer for windows

Our free PDF printer works with all windows applications because we use a virtual printer to create PDF files. The PDF creation process is as follows: First, create your documents in your favourite application e. g. Word. To create a PDF of your document just print it out on the virtual PDF printer. This creates a PDF file based on the contents of your document.

Free PDF software for everyone

The free PDF software by PDF24 can not only create PDF files but also edit them. The PDF software contains a virtual PDF printer with which you can create PDF files out of almost any application and a PDF editor to edit existing PDF files. The editor is a powerful tool which can rearrange, delete or paste pages, merge or split documents, edit properties and a lot more. Have a look at our free PDF software.

PDF editor to edit PDF files

PDF24 provides a free PDF editor for windows. This PDF editor is freeware which you can use to edit your PDF files. The PDF editor contains a lot of useful features and is very easy to use.

Edit PDF files with PDF24 Creator

The new PDF24 Creator contains a PDF editor to edit PDF files. The editor contains lots of useful features for daily life. You can split, merge and rearrange pages, secure a PDF with a password, change PDF properties and much more. You need the PDF24 PDF Creator to edit PDF files for free.

What's New

Doctool: Added function to convert HTML files to PDFs

  • This version brings the possibility to convert HTML files to PDF via command line. This is possible via the -convertToPDF switch.

Doctool: Allow overwriting files or not

  • PDF24 Creator 11.11.1 allowed the DocTool to overwrite existing files if the user so desires. However, there is one use case where this behavior is not desired. To cover this case, the docTool.forceMakeNameUnique [DWORD32] option can now be used to control how the DocTool should behave. If this value is set to 1, a unique file name will be generated in any case, as was the case in older versions.

Doctool: Outputs on the command line now visible

  • Process outputs are now printed on the console when the Doctool is used on the command line. Previously, DocTool outputs could not be traced on the command line.

Common: Consideration of locales when converting numbers

  • When converting numbers, the locale is now taken into account and set for certain functions to ensure a specific number format. Without a correct locale, there may be problems with some functions. Currently, this is only an issue when the console is opened because this changes the locale in the app. This change can then cause problems for some users. This issue has been improved.

Common: Missing characters in the console due to incorrect encoding

  • Fixed a problem with missing characters in the console when the console is open. We now call setlocale with an empty string to set the default locale for the user or system system. This fixes the problem with the output in the console.

Common: Three memory leak sources found and removed

  • These memory leaks are not particularly critical because the PDF24 apps are usually closed again quite quickly and thus the memory is freed up again, but we do not like memory leaks and have thus investigated and fixed them.

Reader: PDF24 Reader now takes into account the DPI of the monitor

  • Enabled PER_MONITOR_AWARE_V2 to fix problems with the PDF preview when used in a multi-monitor environment with different DPI values. With this improvement, the PDF preview now behaves correctly even if you move it between monitors.

Reader: Printing multiple PDFs via command line

  • Multiple PDF files can be printed at once via the command line. To do this, use the command line as described so far in the manual. To pass another document now, you can place this further document behind the other one. Then both documents will be printed one after the other.

Reader: Jump targets now better visible

  • Making the destination visible via bookmarks has been improved. The target area of the page is now taken into account to display the corresponding point of the target. Previously, only a "Go to page" was performed, but this was not good enough for certain views and zoom sizes.

Reader: Faster text selection

  • With some PDFs PDF24 Reader could freeze when text was selected. We have analyzed this and improved the implementation. The new version is now much faster and also selecting many words via for example STRG+A is now smooth, even with the files that caused problems.

Reader: PDFium updated to BRANCH chromium/5846

This means that PDFium's improvements will also benefit PDF24 Reader.

Assistant: Better visible background color for selected file elements

FileTools: Better visible background color for selected file elements

Creator:

  • When trying to save a modified PDF with PDF24 Creator and the destination file was opened with another program and blocked, the error message "Error=32 File copy error from=tempFile to=destinationFile" appears. This message could only be confirmed with an OK button - saving failed. The OK button has now been replaced with a Retry and Cancel button, so that you now also have the option to close the application that is blocking the destination file and then try to save again using the Retry button.

Toolbox: New color of the primary button

  • The color of the primary button is now slightly darker to improve the color contrast of background and font.

Toolbox: Green check mark to emphasize offline processing

  • A small green check mark next to the text "Works offline" emphasizes that PDF24 processes files offline.

Toolbox: Create electronic invoices integrated

  • The tool for creating electronic invoices is now also available offline in PDF24 Creator. Now you can create invoices offline according to ZUGFeRD and XInvoice standards.

Toolbox: CMaps problem in PDF editor fixed

  • PDF files using CMaps were not displayed correctly in the editor because of a problem with the CMaps URL. The problem has been fixed.

Toolbox: PDF compression failed when console was open

  • When the black console (F12) was opened, PDF compression failed. The problem is fixed.

Toolbox: Execution of Toolbox functions via command line

  • A command line switch has been added to start Toolbox functions via the command line. This means that it is now possible to do almost everything that the Toolbox offers via the command line. A detailed description of this function is not yet available. Until the documentation is available in the manual, feel free to contact PDF24 directly.

Toolbox: Fixed a crash caused by converting empty number fields

  • For some tools, the toolbox crashed if one of the integer values was left empty. In this case the conversion failed and the toolbox crashed. This issue is fixed.

PDFLib: Output of floating point numbers improved

  • The way of outputting floating point numbers has been improved. Zeros at the end are now removed, which makes the PDF slightly smaller.

Ghostscript: PDF/A creation and problem with umlauts and other characters fixed

  • PDF/A are created with the help of Ghostscript. However, there was a problem that metadata is discarded when using umlauts and other Unicode characters. We have investigated and fixed the problem and sent this patch to the Ghostscript developers. The report can be found here: https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=706781

PDF24 Creator 11.12.1 changelog

Common: Components updated

  • This release updates some components that are included in PDF24 Creator. The following components have been updated: OpenJDK 17.0.7, Webview2 113.0.1774.35, Ghostscript 10.01.1, Language files

Common: Overlay problem fixed

  • Fixed a problem with the overlay method. An overlay could not be applied if the PDF contained a page without defining any content stream. This problem has been fixed.

Toolbox: Split and merge optimizations

  • Sometimes after splitting or merging PDFs, some output files were too large because elements that were not yet needed were included. Sometimes too much data is included in a final PDF if the data is referenced in a page, even if it is not actually needed. Improvements have been made to the detection of these so that the resulting files are now smaller after splitting or merging for certain PDFs.

Toolbox: Improvements in converting PDF to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

  • There is also an updated component responsible for converting PDF to Office files. The new component brings improvements in converting PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Reader: Printing multiple page ranges

  • In PDF24 Reader it was previously only possible to print one page range at a time. This has been improved so that now also several page ranges can be defined in the print dialog and finally printed.

Reader: Delete and rotate page in Reader

  • The functions Delete page, Rotate page left and Rotate page right have been added to the context menu of a page. The changes of this function are permanent and can be saved. If a page is not oriented correctly or if you need to delete one or the other page, you can now also do this very quickly via the PDF24 Reader. More such functions are on the TODO.

ShellExt: Windows Explorer could crash when using the DLL

  • Fixed a problem that could cause Windows Explorer to crash. The shell extension DLL signaled Windows Explorer too early that the DLL could be unloaded, although it was still in use. On some systems, extensions in the form of a DLL are apparently unloaded quite quickly, which then ultimately led to this problem. On many other systems, like our test systems, this problem did not exist and therefore the analysis and fixing of the problem was a bit more difficult. The issue was investigated and the problem was fixed.

PDF24 Creator 11.11.0 Release Notes

PDF Preview: Problem with registration fixed

  • Fixed a problem with registering the PDF preview handler with the EXE installer. There were two missing fields that prevented the preview handler from loading in some applications, e.g. Outlook.

DocTool: Overwriting of files for many functions now possible

  • For most file operations, existing files can now be overwritten if the user chooses to do so. Previously, the user was prompted to overwrite, but a unique file name was still generated under which the file was eventually saved.

Reader: Opened files can now be overwritten

  • In previous versions, there was an error message that the file is blocked because it is opened by Reader. We have now implemented a solution for this situation. You can now overwrite the file opened in the reader when you save it via the reader. So you can now fill in form fields and save them under the same filename.

Reader: Lock/unlock system (Windows + L) could change the background color of the toolbar

  • On some systems, the background color of the toolbar in Reader changed when the system was locked and unlocked again via Windows key + L. This problem could be reproduced and fixed. This issue could be reproduced and fixed.

Reader: Set focus on the password input field

  • A small optimization has been made when asking for a password. There is now a focus on the password input field when the password input field appears, so that the user can enter the password directly without having to click with the mouse in the input field. This makes it a bit faster to enter the password.

Reader: New scalable icons

  • This version now also brings new icons for the Reader that are better suited for different screens. The icons are now sharp on screens with different DPI scaling. Previously, raster icons were used and the new version now uses vector icons. This gives the Reader a better look.

Reader: Using the legacy print dialog under Windows 11

  • Under Windows 11, the old Windows print dialog is used when printing from the Reader, which was used until Windows 10. The new dialog is somehow not so well thought out and some functions in this dialog can not be controlled and used. Therefore, we now enforce the dialog that was used until Windows 10. In the near future we will offer our own print dialog with extended functions incl. print preview, which will then replace the native dialog.

Reader: PDFium updated to the latest version

Reader: Improved display of character selection in form fields

  • Highlighting of selected characters in form fields have been improved. Areas are now cropped to prevent certain areas from being drawn twice, as drawing twice results in darker areas.

Reader: CTRL + X support for form input fields

  • CTRL + X can now be used to cut selected characters in input fields. CTRL + C and CTRL + V were already supported, but CTRL + X was still missing.

Reader: CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT key combination deleted characters instead of selecting them

  • The key combination CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT deleted the character next to the caret, but should select it. The problem is now fixed. CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT now selects the character next to the caret.

Reader: Print snapshot and current view maximized

  • In the previous version, the function was implemented that you can print the snapshot and the current view. We have extended this function so that you can now print them maximized. So you can print an area with maximum size on one sheet