You were asked for a black-and-white PDF, but Word saves it in colour, and choosing “Black and white” in the print dialog doesn’t carry over to a PDF. Here are three ways that work. Which one to pick depends on whether the text must stay selectable or only needs to look black and white.
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When you create a PDF with Save As or Export in Word, the document’s colours go straight into the PDF. There is no colour or grayscale option on that screen.
Printing to “Microsoft Print to PDF” on Windows has no colour setting either. The “Black and white” or “Grayscale” options in a printer’s settings only affect paper printouts, not PDFs.
So you need to remove the colour in Word first, or convert the PDF to black and white afterwards.
| Method | Effort | Text selectable / searchable | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Make text and pictures grayscale in Word, then save | Can be a lot, depending on the document | Yes | Text-heavy documents, documents you will edit later |
| 2. Convert the colour PDF with PDF to Grayscale | Little | No (pages become images) | Documents with many photos or charts, quick submissions |
| 3. Gray Tone filter in Mac Preview | Little | Yes | Mac users |
To keep the text selectable and searchable, make the Word document itself black and white before creating the PDF. Save a copy first with Save As if you want to keep the original.
All coloured text, including headings and blue links, becomes black.
If headings, tables or shapes use theme colours, go to the Design tab, open Colors and choose “Grayscale”. This doesn’t affect colours that were set directly, so change any that remain one by one.
Choose File > Save As and pick PDF as the file type. You can also convert the document with Word to PDF on this site.
With lots of tables, shapes and photos, recolouring everything in Word takes time. It’s quicker to make a normal colour PDF and convert it.
PDF to Grayscale does this in your browser with no software to install. The PDF isn’t uploaded; it’s processed on your device.
Each page becomes an image, so text can no longer be selected, copied or searched. That’s fine for documents you only submit; if the recipient needs to copy the text, use Method 1.
On a Mac, open the PDF from Word in Preview and choose File > Export. Under Quartz Filter, choose “Gray Tone” and save. Text usually stays selectable, but check the file size afterwards: with many pictures it can change.
To print on paper in black and white, you don’t need a black-and-white PDF. Choose “Black and white” or “Grayscale” in the printer’s properties and a colour PDF prints in black and white. Convenience-store copiers have the same option.
You only need a black-and-white file when the file itself must be black and white, for example for e-Tax or a company submission.
A. No. Word’s save screen has no colour setting. Remove the colour in Word first, or convert the finished PDF with PDF to Grayscale.
A. No. It has no colour setting and keeps the colours as they are.
A. In Word, set the font colour to Automatic and recolour pictures to Grayscale, then save as PDF. On a Mac, Preview’s Gray Tone Quartz filter also works.
A. Strictly, monochrome (1-bit) has only black and white, while grayscale has shades in between. When a submission asks for “black and white”, grayscale is usually what they mean.
A. Yes. Save as PDF in the Word app, then open PDF to Grayscale in your browser and convert it.