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I'm looking for a PDF printer that doesn't ask the user to choose a filename and directory, but simply saves it to a predefined folder with a unique filename.

The print jobs will come from third party applications I have no control of, so I cannot fix this via coding solutions.

Addition: I'm looking for commercial solutions with good support.

Addition 2: It must support 32 and 64 bits Windows.

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  • This looks like a near exact duplicate of superuser.com/questions/102302/need-a-fast-reliable-pdf-printer. I hypothesize the OP from my link didn't like the answers and is giving it another go.
    – rodey
    Feb 2, 2010 at 18:04
  • I hope that you don't mean that I'm that person, as I'm certainly not. And besides that the question isn't really the same ...
    – Marc vB
    Feb 2, 2010 at 20:28

8 Answers 8

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Bullzip PDF Printer can also autosave with a predetermined filename.

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  • Chrome 40.0.2214.111 blocks the download with "may harm your browsing experience". User reviews of Bullzip PDF printer at Cnet include lots of malware complaints. Might be legit, but it is off-putting.
    – Lauri Harpf
    Feb 17, 2015 at 12:56
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    @LauriHarpf PDFCreator has similar problems. It seems it calls a 3rd-party advertising site during the installation process (fair enough) but runs whatever that site gives it, with admin rights (since the installer has admin privileges by then), and that can indeed be adware/malware (not so good).
    – Bruno
    Mar 12, 2015 at 16:16
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PDFCreator can autosave with a predetermined filename.

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  • 2
    Lain you beat me by 10 seconds you rat :) +1
    – Unfundednut
    Feb 2, 2010 at 15:33
  • :oP (It's Iain by the way - Arial sucks)
    – Iain
    Feb 2, 2010 at 15:52
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    Strange. PDFCreator has always been stable for me. I have tried plenty of unstable, buggy commercial software. Opensource is better - IMHO.
    – Iain
    Feb 2, 2010 at 19:55
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    @Marc: With all respect, 'commercial' is not the same thing as 'stable'. I found PDFCreator very stable, even when he was handling 75+ MB of files.
    – Bobby
    Feb 2, 2010 at 19:55
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    A few years ago, I had a problem where PDFCreator required a reboot after install. I emailed the developer and he fixed it. He also fixed a few other minor bugs I pointed out.
    – Iain
    Feb 2, 2010 at 21:27
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Have you looked at the Adobe LiveCycle server, it has core modules for automating PDF creation/generation/conversion.

Its commercial, has a defined support roadmap, and is about as proper PDF as you can get, but is a lot more expensive than other apps here, and is aimed far more at 'Enterprise' solutions.

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PDF24 Creator is exacty what you are looking for. And it is even free.

Just open pdf24-Settings.exe and choose the Folder and file naming conventions you like. Every print to this Printer will create a PDF file according your Settings.

Here is a screenshot of the print settings:

relevant PDF24 print settings

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  • @bertieb Thanks - that's better to see the screenshot directly :-)
    – Michael Hutter
    Apr 25, 2018 at 11:17
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If you are looking for a commercial solution, I think Easy PDF Creator can fill your requirements. I have used it to set up a shared network printer with automatic saving (creates the PDF in a predetermined directory) for a similar sounding situation as what you describe. Can setup locally in a similar fashion as well of course. It was very flexible and once set I didn't really ever have to worry about it.

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  • Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work/install on 64 bits systems.
    – Marc vB
    Feb 2, 2010 at 17:58
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Depending on your platform, the PDF printer for CUPS might be an ideal solution. I've used it before on OS X and it's worked great. (Just tell it where to throw the PDFs, set it as your default printer, and you're good to go.) Apple is the official maintainer of CUPS, but I'm not sure of commercial support. I really don't know much about how it's implemented, but it could meet your needs: http://www.codepoetry.net/projects/cups-pdf-for-mosx.

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  • I need it for Windows, so I can't use this one.
    – Marc vB
    Feb 2, 2010 at 18:00
  • In a pinch, you should be able to make this a shared printer on either OS X or Linux and then use it on Windows. A last resort, maybe? :)
    – Benjamin Oakes
    Feb 2, 2010 at 22:06
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If you just want to convert a url or HTML file to a PDF via the command line then I have found this open source tool wkhtmltopdf useful.

Interestingly wkhtmltopdf uses webkit for its rendering so you get the same kind of output as you might from Google Chrome or Safari. Many other solutions roll their own HTML renderer which aren't nearly as good as a browser that has been tweaked to deal with real world HTML.

Note I had to use the -l (low quality) option with the larger pages I am converting:

wkhtmltopdf.exe -l http://http://superuser.com c:\temp\mypdf.pdf

You could then use a batch file or a programming language to loop through a list of file full of urls in order to convert them.

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PrimoPDF can be used from the command line too (it has a GUI but it can be used without a GUI too). It has a free version and a commertional one called nitroPDF.

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