How to: Make PDF Files From Any Document
Learn to use a free tool called PDFCreator to generate PDFs from many different file formats. So, why do you need to create PDF files? PDF has some obvious advantages (and some disadvantages) which has made this document format a universal one across the internet world.
- Supported by all platforms even by the latest PDAs and mobile phones.
- Viewable by PDF reader software which is completely free.
- Can be created from any application and converted from any format using a PDF creator.
- Supported by most browsers.
- Secure encryption, watermarks or read only options.
- Impregnable against Trojans and viruses.
Its omnipresence alone makes the need to have a PDF creator software an essential one. So if you are considering adding one, give the free PDFCreator from PDFforge.org more than a lingering thought.
PDFCreator is a free download from PDFforge.org and is a Windows only (all versions) application. Installation is a cinch which follows the typical Windows installation process. It can be installed on a standalone machine or as a network printer. PDFCreator installs as a printer driver (called as a virtual printer) which is selected from your print options like any other printer.
Fire up PDFCreator:
Simply select Print from the Menu of just about any program. If you have multiple printer drivers installed, then you might have to select PDFCreator from the other ones. Now all that is left is for you to give your document a title and enter or modify a few details like the Date, Author, Subject and Keywords.
You have now a few choices to push with the buttons of Wait –Collect (puts it in queue), eMail (creates the PDF as an email attachment) or Save (saves the document as PDF).
PDFCreator is not simply about creating PDF documents with a click. With PDFCreator you can also create Postscript and Encapsulated Postscript files, create images from your documents, combine documents, plus much more.
Some features it boasts:
Combining documents gives use a way to take two separate documents and merge them into one single PDF file.
PDFcreator also acts like a document to image converter allowing us to output our documents in most of the image formats (PNG, JPEG, BMP, PCX, TIFF, PS, EPS, TEXT, PSD, PCL, RAW, SVG). This is handy if we want to embed a document as an image file in our presentations.
PDFCreator comes with password protection and encryption features. A low (40 bit) and high (128 bit) encryption should be enough to soothe some paranoid nerves. Security enhancements also include useful options which disallow the user to print, copy text and images, modify the document, and make or change comments.
And if you are flummoxed, the useful Help file gives a good walkthrough of all the features.
As an application PDFCreator holds its own with the best of the crowd out there. As a free application it’s just that much better than the competition. So take it for a run!
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July 10th, 2009
Nice Tutorial… As for me I only use Open office. I open documents from MS words and just save it as a pdf File. As simple as that…