Windows
Word freezes when saving to PDF with the PDFMaker add-in disabled
Word was freezing whenever documents were saved as PDF, and an error was shown. The issue was fixed by reenabling the PDFMaker add-in.
Killed once by someone from XL.net, on 2026-06-30.
Affects
Apps
- Word
- PDFMaker add-in
What you see
- Word freezes when opening documents and when trying to save them as PDF.
- An error appears while creating or saving a Word document as a PDF.
Why it happens
Likely The PDFMaker add-in was suspected to be disabled or corrupted after recent updates.
When it shows up
Word freezes or fails when saving to PDF and the PDFMaker add-in is not loading normally.
You are in this case if:
- The PDFMaker add-in is disabled or not enabled in Word's add-ins list.
- The problem happens specifically during Save as PDF or PDF export.
1 fix below
The steps that killed it
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Someone from XL.net killed this on a Windows computer on 2026-06-30. It is written up from that one repair, so it cites no outside page.