Creating .pdf files
June 23, 2008
In our previous post, we discussed what an Adobe Acrobat .pdf was and how to read them. Today we’ll look at ways to create them.
Adobe’s own program is quite expensive, and I won’t discuss it here. If you can afford it, enjoy!
If you have Microsoft’s Word2007 or OpenOffice Writer, you can save any document you have created as a .pdf just by clicking a button. (Click here for a 10-second video of how to save a pdf in Word, and click here for a shot of the same thing in OpenOffice Writer.)
But what if you don’t have either of these programs? What if you’re using an older version of Word, or the free AbiWord program? No problemo.
PrimoPDF is a free program you can download and install that acts like a printer driver. Meaning, when you click Print, PrimoPDF appears as one of your choices for printers. Choose that over your regular printer, and it will save your document as a .pdf.
(Warning: PrimoPDF keeps trying to get you to register, and every ten saves or so it will annoy you with a pop-up registration form that has no X in the corner to close it. But if you click ALT+F4, it will go away. It’s a small price to pay for such a useful tool.)
