How Do I Convert An Unknown File Type to a PDF?

Upload and start working with your PDF documents.
No downloads required

How To Type on PDF Online?

Upload & Edit Your PDF Document
Save, Download, Print, and Share
Sign & Make It Legally Binding

Easy-to-use PDF software

review-platform review-platform review-platform review-platform review-platform

How do I convert an unknown file type to a PDF?

I’m tempted to answer, open it in an unknown application and print to PDF. And technically that would be true, that’s what PDF as a format was invented for — to capture any sort of content and presentation in a portable platform-independent fashion from the print stream. So that’s always an option to this day (provided you have a PDF virtual printer driver on your system), but you do have to to have the app to print from. Otherwise, what content and presentation are you trying to capture in the first place? So do the homework. Google your file’s extension, identify its creating app. Open it in the binary editor and examine the headers to infer the same. Look for online converters from that type to anything visual.

Customers love our service for intuitive functionality

4.5

satisfied

46 votes

Type on PDF: All You Need to Know

Now, I personally like using WinZip for archiving stuff and have my .zip archives stored in the cloud. But if you have multiple types, it's important to understand how and when you capture the original file and format. Some examples of how I think about this: In my personal workflow, all of my writing and photos are stored within Google Drive. I use Google Chrome for my browser and use its built-in web interface to access those online services (Google Docs, Google Drive, Docs Writer, and Google Sheets). When I access that Google Sheets spreadsheet, I will see it as a tabular data sheet. This makes sense — the spreadsheet is stored as a tab-delimited text file in Google Drive and in the process, it is a bit like a document. By presenting this as a tab-delimited spreadsheet within a tabbed UI, I want Google Sheets to present the data.