Word – How to export a Word document as a PNG

Warning! This is a quick and dirty hack that may work, but it is ugly! : )

Fonts often have to be licensed in order to be distributed. You should not do this if you and/or the sender of the document do not have legal rights to distribute the font(s) in question. If you do own the rights to the font(s) then you can try this to install the font into your system. In short, I am not recommending that you break any laws to do this. This is all a theory and you use it at your own risk. I have no idea if this is legal or not, ask your attorney. If you own this font or have a legal right to get at it, you can try this.

I don’t have time right now to convert this process to something easier for you to use, but if you really want to try this, here is what you can do.

Before you continue you should have:

Windows 7 (or MAYBE Windows Vista). If you have Windows XP you may be able to get this to work but you will have to figure out the missing pieces on your own as the instructions are not for XP.

I am assuming you do not have Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or higher installed on your system. If you do, then you should be able to run this code no problem.

If you don’t, you must have the .NET Framework 3.5 or later installed on your system to even try this. That means you must have Windows 7 (which includes it already) or you have to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 on your own (can download here from Microsoft for free if needed http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/cc378097 )

If you have Windows 7 and/or .NET installed, you can try this by going to this guy’s Web site and download his program “TextViewerFind.zip” at the bottom of his page here:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2008/04/17/converting-fixeddocument-xpsdocument-too-to-flowdocument.aspx

Or you can just download the zip file directly from him here: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/WindowsLiveWriter/ConvertingFixedDocumentXPSDocumenttootoF_128D2/TextViewerFind_1.zip

After you have the Zip file on your system, unzip the file anywhere you want and remember where you put it.

Now, open the Word docx file that has the embedded fonts in it that you want to get out.

Save the Word document as an “XPS Document *.xps” document type and RENAME the Word document from whatever it is currently named to lorem.xps instead. Place it as lorem.xps into this “Resources” folder on your computer that you have from unzipping that file you downloaded:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\Resources

If it asks you if you want to copy over the existing lorem.xps, say YES.

So you should end up with a new copy of your Word document, saved as an XPS file, renamed to lorem.xps, inside of a path like this:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\Resources\lorem.xps

Now run the file named TextViewerFind.exe that you unzipped. It is inside of here, double-click it:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\bin\Debug\TextViewerFind.exe

It should open up a Window with your lorem.xps XPS document in it. If you see your document in the Window, great, it is working!

If you don’t see your document in the Window or you get an error, make sure you saved it as an XPS document type, renamed it to lorem.xps, and placed it in the right “Resources” folder as previously described above. (You have Windows 7 or .NET 3.5 right?)

Close the Window that popped up. While opening this Window, the program also COPIED your font(s) into this folder on your system (if you Have Windows 7 or maybe Vista):

C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\

The important part is you are looking for a file in there, date and time of right now, that has a file extension of “.odttf” on it.

If you see a file in there with that extension, RENAME the file extension from

.odttf

to

.ttf

So you will have a new file named something like blah-60042DDE-3C60.ttf

Double –click on that file and it should open the Font in the Windows Font Viewer. Confirm it is the Font you want to install, that you have legal right to install it, and then click the “Install” button. You should now have the font in your system. You can delete these files now if you want to.

I told you it was a hack and if you are still reading this you must REALLY want that font! : )

Good luck! Let me know if it works.

If you are using Windows 10 then you are lucky: you don’t need any third party PDF printer. Windows 10 comes with a PDF printer called Microsoft PDF Printer that you can make use of. I tried and it printed with decent resolution.

If running on Windows 8.1 or below, or requiring more functionality/better quality, JoelAZ’s answer is better. Just pay attention to where you download.