A process for making a cyclic compounds such as cyclic acetal or cyclic ketones by feeding aldehyde or ketone compounds and polyhydroxyl compounds to a reaction zone at a molar ratio of polyhydroxyl compounds to aldehyde or ketone compounds of at least 3:1, reacting these compounds in the presence of a solid acid such as an acidic ion exchange resin, to generate a liquid reaction mixture without separating water from the reaction mixture as it is being formed in the reaction mixture, withdrawing the liquid reaction mixture from the reaction zone as a liquid product stream, and feeding the liquid reaction product stream to a distillation column to separate cyclic acetal compounds from unreacted polyhydroxyl compounds, and optionally recycling back the unreacted polyhydroxyl compounds to the reaction zone. The process produces cyclic acetal compounds in yields of at least 90% with long catalyst life. The process is also suitable to make cyclic ketals from ketone compounds.