Often times we have been asked how to create a PDF file in Windows, preferably without needing to buy Adobe’s Acrobat Professional which comes at an exorbitant price tag of €676! This usually comes from small business clients who don’t want to send Word documents either because they don’t want the file to be editable, or in case the intended recipient doesn’t have the necessary office software.

Fortunately there are a few options for creating nice looking PDF documents without needing to break open your wallet.

doPDF

doPDF is a simple tool that you install on your computer which allows you to ‘print’ a PDF file from any programme in Windows. Once installed it acts as a virtual printer which will appear alongside any other printers you may have installed.

1. Download doPDF from www.dopdf.com,
2. Install following the on-screen instructions,
3. Open the document you want to convert to a PDF file – this can be anything, an word document, a spreadsheet, a web page, you name it,
4. Select File > Print,
5. Choose doPDF from your printer choices,
6. A doPDF dialogue box will pop up asking you where you want to save your PDF file.

It’s as simple as that. You’ll now have a nice PDF file which you can send to a client. doPDF is free to all, I suppose in the hope that you like it so much that you’ll think of buying their professional version – novaPDF, which allows more options including password protection, profiles, print resolution options, watermarks and more. novaPDF comes in at around $30.

Open Office

For most people the only time they need to create a PDF is in relation to an office document, either a word doc or a spreadsheet. Here at Pixelapes we use Open Office as our standard office document software. Open Office is an open-source programme which offers a solid and free replacement of the Microsoft Office suite.

Not only will it open all Microsoft Office formats¹, but in addition to this it allows any document to be exported directly as a PDF file.

As you can see in the image on the right, it is as simple as one click on the PDF icon on the toolbar!

If you want more options you can click File > Export as PDF. This brings up a PDF Options dialogue which allows you to select what pages to export, image compression options, view options and password controls.

1. There is an exception with the new .docx proprietary format which Microsoft have introduced with Office 2007. I assume that the Open Office team will sort out an importer for this soon.