What XPS files are
XPS (XML Paper Specification) is a fixed-layout document format by Microsoft, a little like PDF. Windows has long included a virtual printer called Microsoft XPS Document Writer. When people choose it by mistake instead of "Microsoft Print to PDF", they get an .xps file. Windows 8 and later save the newer variant OXPS (Open XPS). Some scanners, banking programs and older business software also produce XPS.
The problem is that XPS is rarely supported. Since Windows 10 version 1803, the XPS Viewer is no longer installed by default, and macOS, Android and iPhone cannot open XPS at all. Converting to PDF solves that.
What is kept
The pages are converted one to one: page size, text, fonts, vector graphics and images look as in the XPS file. Text stays text in the PDF, so you can search and copy it. In some viewers, spaces copied from the text may appear as non-breaking spaces; this does not change how the PDF looks.
You can convert several XPS files at once. They are converted one after another, and you can download each PDF as soon as it is ready, or all of them together as a ZIP. Turn on Combine into one PDF to get a single document in the order of the list.
The PDF has the same paper size as the XPS file. If a document was printed to XPS with the wrong paper size, for example Letter instead of A4, change it afterwards with Resize PDF.
Privacy and limits
The conversion runs on our own server with open-source software. Files are uploaded over HTTPS, converted and deleted right after; the PDF is kept for 15 minutes at most. Each file can be up to 100 MB. To avoid XPS files in future, choose "Microsoft Print to PDF" in the Windows print dialog. If you have several documents to send together, combine them with Merge PDF; for everything else, the PDF Converter handles many more formats.