Print to File - Comments Page 1

PDF is definitely the way to go. We use CutePDF as our PDF driver. One other advantage of sending a PDF is that the Word document "source code" does not get sent. Your .doc file may contain your edit history, which could be viewable by the recipient, and you may not want that to happen. A PDF file can be considered "an electronic piece of paper".

Bob:

Your information is so helpful.

Thank you very much,

Pch

I have been using CutePDF Writer for quite some time as my default printer and it works great by retaining all formatting of the document; then I can email or simply send to printer or whatever I wish to do with the document created. Highly recommended and it's FREE!
http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.asp

CutePDF is also a good, free alternative if you just wish to create PDFs. No bells or whistles, though.

You mentioned using a pdf. I don't use Adobe reader. Too bloated. Use Foxit. Much more light-weight.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/reader3.php

But what about the size of the attachment? .pdf, .mdi .tiff and other images can create large files that often aren't well-suited for email.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Large files are better suited for transfer by a drop-box service, such as Drop.io

I use a program called Universal Document Converter, available for $69 at http://www.print-driver.com and it works great. You install it as a printer driver choice. Pick the output type you want, color, black and white, jpg, pdf, tiff, or any or over a dozen choices and print the file (any printable file, web page, office doc, spreadsheet etc.) I have not found anything it could not print to a file. Sorry if I sound like a commercial but I think this is one of the best programs out there although perhaps a bit overpriced now.

I've tried other "print to PDF file" software and have to say that PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com/) is by far the best free one I've ever used. I particularly like the feature where it gives you a choice of overwriting or concatenating to an existing PDF file. That comes in handy when scanning a page directly into a PDF file. After the first page, you can just concatenate subsequent pages to create one PDF document. It also has lots of other great features. Did I also mention that it's FREE?

Office 7 includes PDF as one of its "Save As" file options.

As no one has mentioned it, I must recommend PDF Xchange viewer (http://www.docu-track.com/). This is not for creating pdf's, but if all you need is a viewer with copy and print options, it's the one. I have tried all the freebies and this is the best! Tons of features, loads fast, check it out. See here too - http://download.cnet.com/PDF-XChange-Viewer/3000-10743_4-10598377.html

Of course, if you use a Macintosh, you can choose "Print to PDF" from the Print dialogue.

Any image or document displayed on the screen can be 'printed' as a PDF.

McAfee Security Advisor considers Bullzip to be a dangerous site that downloads malware of some sort.

EDITOR'S NOTE: McAfee is famous for false positives. Ignore this warning...

I remember using RTF to do some stuff involving fancy fonts and graphic inserts. Could not find much on it in Vista Home Prem Help (ha ha). Where can I find info on RTF to be used in Vista. Like a right click setup that will produce an RTF page or document? Hope this is fairly "on-topic" for formatted document users. Seems like it was in an early edition of XP, but not sure.

EDITOR'S NOTE: RTF is pretty much obsolete. Microsoft is dropping support for RTF next year. PDF is a better way to go.

Any PDF printer I've ever used doesn't create multi-page PDF's. That is, if what you are printing would normally be printed on two pages, the resulting PDF nevertheless takes up only one page (in extremely tiny letters!).

Does PDFCreator handle multi-page PDF's correctly?????

I recently discovered doPDF, which installs as a print driver to generate PDFs and doesn't require GhostScript (or .NET, actually) and is totally free. I personally like not having to install multiple applications to get this feature.

Now, I've had the issue where I wanted to add several image files into one PDF and started looking for software to do it (sounds like PrimoPDF is good for this) and turned up nothing. Then I discovered that if I brought up an image in the Windows Photo Viewer and selected print from that application, I had an option to check multiple images to print, which very conveniently allowed me to print multiple scans into a single PDF file. Note that this was in XP - I haven't yet proven that this is possible in Windows 7 or Vista, but I'm still looking into it.

Try Nitro's PrimoPDF - it's free and attaches to your PC as a print driver. So instead of printing to your default printer - you print to 'primoPDF'

The net result is that whatever you selected to print (Word DOC, Excel, or a webpage) is turned into a PDF you can save or email

Per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFCreator) PDFCreator installs an ADWARE toolbar, which is difficult to remove. Apparently, sourceforge.net has failed as yet to fully resolve this controversy.

Please be careful when installing PDF creator, as you need to uncheck the install toolbar option -it's called PDF Architect toolbar if I remember correctly. It then installs the PDF reader PDF Architect without asking; or at least I did not see it doing so. Uninstalling PDF Architect does not remove much of the software. I had to remove it manually, which was time consuming and required a moderate degree of computer knowhow.