Vellum converts a Word document (.docx), an Excel workbook (.xlsx) or a PowerPoint deck (.pptx) into a PDF without a server in between. The file is read exactly as it is written — paragraphs, headings, bold and italic, lists, tables, images, worksheets, slides — then rebuilt as a PDF made of real text: selectable, searchable and small, never a screenshot of the pages. The layout is reconstructed rather than copied: a letter, a report, a spreadsheet or a plain deck come out faithful, while an elaborate design shifts. Whatever is left out — headers and footers, footnotes, charts, floating shapes — is listed after the conversion instead of being glossed over. The old .doc, .xls and .ppt formats are not supported: they have to be saved in the current format first. Several files can be converted at once and downloaded as a ZIP archive.
No. The file is opened and converted by your browser, on your device: no network request is made during the conversion, and nothing is stored. A contract, a payslip or a class list therefore never leaves the machine.
The layout is rebuilt from what the file actually contains; it is not photographed. A letter, a report, an invoice, a spreadsheet or a plain deck come out very close to the original: headings, bold and italic, lists, tables, images, alignment and page breaks are all carried over. An elaborate design — columns, floating text boxes, headers, charts — will shift: every element that is left out is listed after the conversion, so you know exactly what is missing.
No. Those three extensions denote an old binary format, very different from today’s files. Open the document in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or LibreOffice, save it as .docx, .xlsx or .pptx, then run the conversion again.
Accents and the everyday characters of French, German and Italian are preserved as they are. The original fonts, however, are not embedded: the PDF uses a standard font, which keeps the file small and avoids downloading any font. Text spacing may therefore shift slightly.
A .docx, .xlsx or .pptx file is a ZIP archive full of XML (the OOXML format). Vellum opens that archive, reads the structure written in the document — paragraphs, styles, cells, slides — then draws the PDF page by page. The result holds real text, selectable and searchable, rather than a picture of the pages: the file stays small and its content stays copyable.
Vellum — free PDF tools whose processing stays on your device.