How to print documents to pdf

Question

I like to print PDFs of my documents. I've been using PDFCreator. Is this a good choice, are there any better solutions?

Maybe you could give us some details on what you mean by "better". Better quality, more features, or what?

2 revs fourstar · Answer 1 · 2009-07-17 11:03:45Z

up vote 24 down vote accepted

CutePDF Writer is working well for us (way less flaky than the slightly old version of Acrobat we are running at work, anyway)

EDIT: There is also information in the CutePDF FAQ about using parameters to change the print quality/file size settings which we have found useful for larger documents.

edited Jul 17 '09 at 11:03

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2 revs
fourstar

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We've found it is better at generating PDFs from Crystal reports than Crystal Reports itself... – Rowland Shaw Jul 15 '09 at 20:03

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@Rowland: then again, writing the binary yourself would probably be better than using Crystal Reports' 'functionality'... – ajm Jul 15 '09 at 20:20

+1 Doesn't bug you like some options. – Daniel A. White Jul 16 '09 at 12:52

Thank you! Total life saver! I had to save a form that was supposed to be displayed as pdf, but Chrome didn't recognize it as such. CutePDF did exactly what I needed :) – Sverre Rabbelier Mar 10 '11 at 23:07

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kartikmohta · Answer 2 · 2009-07-15 10:02:49Z

up vote 19 down vote

I prefer PDFCreator over the other tools. Much more flexibility than the others but probably is an overkill for simple purposes.

answered Jul 15 '09 at 10:02

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kartikmohta

I had two problems with PDFCreator: If im printing something like a presentation, the margins are white. Maybe there is an option to change that. Rhe other is that sometimes I cant find the save dialog box. And when it appears, there is a list of all the pdf prints Ive ordered. – Artur Carvalho Jul 16 '09 at 18:21

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The margins are white because your presentation software has a print margin set. If you use borderless printing (assuming the software supports it) you'll get PDFs with no border. – AnonJr Jul 17 '09 at 11:45

I love that PDFCreator will let you create the end result in more than one format, and you can use it to "merge" multiple documents into one PDF - great if you have different people working on different chapters of a user manual... – AnonJr Jul 17 '09 at 11:49

PDFCreator is my favorite as well. – Justin Dearing Jul 31 '09 at 13:04

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Arjan · Answer 3 · 2009-07-15 10:09:13Z

Using the built-in Export to PDF option in OpenOffice.org has one VERY major advantage over anything that simulates a printer: it creates clickable table of contents, cross-references, indexes and explicit internet links. Of course, most PDF viewers will recognise some URLs and email addresses. But when linking some text to some URL, most PDF printers do not make that into a clickable link. That's simply because the print processor does not "tell" the PDF printer about this.

As a side note: on a Mac, PDF is very much integrated. Still, when using OpenOffice.org on a Mac, one should also explicitly use Export to PDF -- using the Save to PDF option from a Mac's print dialog does not create clickable links. However, some other Mac programs do in fact somehow send such information to the Mac's print processor, through the print dialog. For example, when saving to PDF using the print dialog in Pages, Safari or OmniWeb (the latter being non-Apple software), all links are in fact clickable. (On a Mac, when one does NOT want clickable links when saving a web site as PDF, one should in fact use Firefox instead.)

By the way: getting a clickable table of contents is a very good reason to learn how to use styles and headers. One should never have to create a table of contents manually!

Yeah, Macs have fantastic PDF support. And using the new trackpads to zoom in and out (or even rotate) is really great.

Sliff · Answer 4 · 2009-07-15 09:53:49Z

up vote 10 down vote

If it's Office 2007 applications that you're printing from, there's an add-in to provide a Save as PDF option:

Office 2007 Save as PDF Add-in

answered Jul 15 '09 at 9:53

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Sliff

	Any idea if this creates clickable table of contents, cross-references and so on? – Arjan Jul 15 '09 at 10:17
	Yes, I've used it for converting a number of technical manuals I've authored with large tables of contents and lots of cross references, and these were all clickable in the resultant PDF. – Sliff Jul 15 '09 at 11:14

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2 revs Davide Vosti · Answer 5 · 2009-07-16 10:35:26Z

up vote 9 down vote

I used primo pdf since a while, and it works great

edited Jul 16 '09 at 10:35

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2 revs
Davide Vosti

Yup; use this all the time. – Steve Melnikoff Jul 15 '09 at 20:18

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Mark Pim · Answer 6 · 2009-07-15 09:27:59Z

up vote 4 down vote

I use pdf995. Shareware, but the license isn't too expensive and it works really nicely. Also has the ability to split and merge pdfs, add watermarks and more.

answered Jul 15 '09 at 9:27

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Mark Pim

	I use it too, it has good quality, it's great if you don't mind the ads – djeidot Jul 15 '09 at 22:27
	I used to use it too, but the adds are pretty annoying. Switched to CutePDF – kristof Jul 16 '09 at 11:28

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spinodal · Answer 7 · 2009-07-16 12:38:54Z

I use doPDF and it is very successful. And free...

doPDF installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list. To convert to PDF, you just have to print the document to doPDF.

Mercer Traieste · Answer 8 · 2009-07-15 09:27:39Z

up vote 3 down vote

OpenOffice is another option.

answered Jul 15 '09 at 9:27

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Mercer Traieste

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Nathan Fellman · Answer 9 · 2009-07-15 10:03:39Z

Another option (the one I used to use until all the other programs listed here came out) is to install a printer driver for a Postscript printer, connected to the FILE: port.

When you print to that printer, you'll get a postscript (.ps) file. You can then open that using Ghostscript and Ghostview and convert them to PDF from there.