What’s New in CKEditor’s Converters: Introducing Export to PDF v2 and More
CKEditor’s Word and PDF document converters continue to evolve. Recent updates introduced a major new version of Export to PDF, expanding layout flexibility. Additionally, along with stability improvements, Word converters now support footnotes.
This blog post covers some recent changes to converters:
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Export to PDF 1.11.0, which introduced v2, was released on February 12, 2026.
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Import and Export to Word 1.23.0, which introduced support for footnotes, was released on January 15, 2025.
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Import and Export to Word 1.22.1, 1.22.2, and 1.22.3 were released earlier, which included incremental updates and fixes.
What’s new in Export to PDF v2?
Version 1.11.0 introduced a new /v2/convert/html-pdf endpoint. For Export to PDF v2, this release brings significant feature expansion, improved payload handling, and a restructured API aligned with Export to Word v2.
Many of the features below move Export to PDF closer to feature parity with Export to Word by aligning the request payload and setup. These make both converters easier to configure side by side. Some features also add PDF-specific capabilities beyond Word’s current scope.
Flexible document layout
NEW Header and footer variants
Export to PDF now supports separate header and footer variants for:
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First page
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Odd pages
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Even pages
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Default
If a specific variant isn’t provided, Default(fallback) is used (e.g., if only Even + Default are set, Default applies to odd pages, including the first page. Headers and footers also support images, enabling more advanced document layouts such as branded reports or book-style formatting.
NEW Custom page sizes
In addition to predefined formats, page size can now be defined using custom width and height values, offering greater layout flexibility.
NEW Mirror margins
Mirror margins enable book-style layouts where left and right margins alternate between odd and even pages, making them useful for print-ready documents.
Configuration options
NEW Metadata
Integrators can assign metadata fields for PDF export, including title, author, subject, and keywords. You can also assign custom fields.
NEW Password protection and signatures
The new security configuration allows you to set password protection for converter files. Users can also have digital signatures using PKCS#12 certificates without needing to manually type or copy/paste.
All the security and signing options are configurable and can be automated through the API.
Significantly increased payload capacity
Export to PDF v2 now uses stream processing by default, allowing dramatically larger payloads compared to v1.
While v1 handled documents in the range of tens of megabytes, v2 supports payloads reaching hundreds of megabytes and beyond in benchmark testing. This enables the generation of large reports and book-scale PDFs.
Compression enabled by default
PDF compression is now enabled by default to reduce output file size. It can be disabled via config.disable_compression.
What’s new in Export to Word?
NEW HTML footnotes support
Export to Word now supports converting HTML footnotes from CKEditor 5 into Word endnotes.
NEW Support for non-HTTPS resources
The converter now allows resource requests over HTTP. To enable this feature, the ALLOW_INSECURE_RESOURCES environment variable must be set to true.
For security reasons, it remains disabled by default.
CSS class casing
Fixed an issue where CSS class names written in camelCase were incorrectly applied during conversion. Styles now respect class name casing.
What’s new in Import from Word?
NEW Footnotes and endnotes
Just like other converters, Import from Word now supports transforming footnotes and endnotes to HTML footnotes.
Since CKEditor 5 supports endnotes only, Word footnotes are automatically transformed into endnotes during import.
Common Improvements
Internal dependencies were updated in versions 1.22.1, 1.22.2, 1.22.3, and 1.23.0 to improve stability, performance, and security.
Quick Links
Feedback and Support
If you have specific questions or want to report an issue, please contact us.
How to get CKEditor Word Converters
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New users can try all advanced word converter features with our 14-day free trial.
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Export to Word is available on Free, Essential, Professional, and Custom CKEditor plans, while Import from Word is available on Professional and Custom plans. To use converters, you must be on a subscription plan, which include conversion usage limits.
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Converters are also available for enterprise customers or teams with custom licensing needs. Contact us to explore tailored plans.
