Creating and saving PDF files requires the author to install some sort of third party software that understands the PDF format. PDF is short for Portable Document Format, a technology developed by Adobe Systems over 15 years ago.
PDF is a format suitable for documents meant to be received by diverse groups readers. Due to the amount of PDF software available for all sorts of different computer systems, the PDF format provides a way for an author to ensure his document is seen and read as he intended regardless of the type of computer, operating system or software that a reader is using. Enabling documents to be distributed among readers with confidence has made PDF an extremely popular format.
Beyond document portability, PDF has some extensive security features that make the format even more valuable to document authors. First of all, PDFs can be password protected so that only a trusted reader can access their contents. Secondly, PDF documents can be digitally signed with a certificate of authenticity that allows the reader to verify the identity of the document’s origin. With PDF, readers and authors can feel confident about protecting the integrity of their information.
Creating and saving PDFs
The acts of both creating and saving PDF documents require special software that understands, and can read and write the PDF format. As the creator of the PDF format, Adobe systems naturally has a suite of software dedicated to PDF. Adobe provides a handful of different programs that range in price, which directly correlates to the richness of composition and number of features of PDF that can be taken advantage of. Adobe’s Acrobat family product pages go in depth about the features of their PDF software suites.
PDF documents can also be generated from word processors like Microsoft Word. Since anyone can create PDF software without paying Adobe a fee, there are many different add-ons that will enable your word processor to save as PDF (including Adobe’s Acrobat software family), and still more programs that will convert saved word processor documents into PDF documents. Wikipedia has a list of PDF software that’s continually updated. Of Zen and Computing has not tested any of this software though, so use it at your own risk.
Creating PDFs on a Windows PC with PDFCreator
If you search for PDF software, most of the things you find will have a price tag. Some of the PDF software out there even costs hundreds of dollars! Luckily for us, there are thousands of programmers in the world who produce free software as both a hobby and a job, and one such free product is PDFCreator. PDFCreator is a free program that installs itself on your Windows computer as if it were a printer. Using this PDFCreator “printer”, you can compose a document in a program like Microsoft Word and then produce a PDF by printing to PDFCreator.
To get started, download and run the PDFCreator MSI installer from the PDFCreator download page. Once the installer finishes installing PDFCreator, you’re ready to start saving PDFs.
- Open up an office document, click File and click Print.
- Select PDFCreator as your printer and then press the print button.
- PDFCreator will open a new window on your screen and ask you to fill in some information. Follow the directions, click the Save button and select a location in which to save your PDF file.
- Go to the location where you saved the PDF file (e.g. your Desktop, My Documents, etc…). You’ll see the icon and filename for your new PDF file, which is ready to be printed, uploaded, e-mailed, or whatever.
Creating PDFs on a Mac
The Mac OS X operating system actually has PDF functionality built right in. From any OS X program, print the document that’s displayed on your screen. When the print dialog window appears, you’ll notice a button on the bottom left that reads “PDF”. Click on this PDF button and a gamut of different PDF-related options will appear in a new menu. From this menu, you can save PDF documents, fax them, compress them, encrypt them, e-mail them and more.
