well...

that seems to work.

i want to be clear: i tried uploading doc files to google drive and then downloading them as pdfs and the formatting often broke on them. the same thing happened at several of the free conversion sites, including at the adobe site. so, i mean, i tried this, and it didn't work.

the smallpdf.com site was particularly accurate for whatever reason, it worked when none of the other sites did, but it has those file size restrictions. and, i mean, i don't know where i'm sending my files to and from, here. 

will the microsoft converters be on par with the smallpdf ones? well, i can hope so, but we'll have to find out. and, there will be files coming to test with soon enough, too.

if this doesn't work out, i can always try openoffice. but, i think i'm happy with this as an answer, so long as it's actually effective.

i don't know why i didn't think of this earlier. well, i guess that microsoft didn't come up in the google search, funny that....

google: fix your word--->pdf conversion. it doesn't work.