Foxit Reader is great alternative to Adobe Acrobat for viewing PDF files. But what if you want to create a PDF file? Sure you could pay for a program that will take your files and convert them to PDF. Or you could use MS Office saves as PDF option. Even OpenOffice has an Export as PDF option but that does the whole document as a PDF file. I ran into this problem with an OpenOffice spreadsheet I had. I wanted each sheet or page to be its own PDF document. After a quick search on the CyberNet Forum, I found a link to PrimoPDF.
So what’s so great about PrimoPDF? For starters it is FREE (yes it is really free)! How about that you can make a PDF from within virtually any application? Yes any application that allows you to print, you can create a PDF file. By installing PrimoPDF you are installing a ‘PDF Printer’ (Windows will name the printer PrimoPDF). When you choose this ‘printer’ to print, the PrimoPDF application will run and present you with this dialog box:
By using this with OpenOffice I was able to create a separate PDF file for each sheet/page of my spreadsheet. This will also work if you have a multi-page document and want each page (or a series of pages) as its own file. Again this program is totally free: No pop-ups, no registration, no evaluation, no time/use limits, no crippled version, etc. There are ads, but they are for ‘sponsors’ and only appear on the dialog box. The program also has a nice users manual, which happens to be in PDF format. PrimoPDF is currently works with Windows 98, 2000, Me, NT, XP & Vista .
Updated: Supported version of Windows.
We have a great list of freeware at one of the forums I frequent. A few alternatives to your mentioning above I can recommend are:
CutePDF – http://www.acrosoftware.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
PDFCreator – http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
PDFill PDFCreator – http://www.pdfill.com/pdf_writer_free.html and
PDFRedirect – http://www.exp-systems.com/
via http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic3616.html
Have a great weekend.
Johannes
“Keep in mind PrimoPDF is currently for Windows XP & Vista only.”
I don’t know, but the PrimoPDF doc file says:
“To install PrimoPDF, your computer should be equipped with the following:
• Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT,
Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.
• A minimum of 30 MB of available disk space. (Additional disk space
may be required, depending on the size and type of files being
converted.)”
@Stifu, Thanks, I’ve updated the supported versions of Windows. Their website didn’t say which it supported. I suppose if I had looked beyond the first couple pages of the manual I would have seen that.
I use PDFCrator as virtual printer but there is a little difference from converting document in PDF and printing them with a virtual printer: links are not correctly converted using virtual printer.
If you use PDFCreator with Ghostscript (last version is 8.60) you can download GSView 4.8 to view your document (instead of Adobe or Foxit).
A good online converter of many kind of documents is Zamzar
http://www.zamzar.com/
ReaSoft PDF Printer is a good one:
http://www.reasoft.com/products/pdfprinter/
Hi,
How about these online applications?
Text to PDF – http://www.text2pdf.co.cc
WYSIWYG PDF Creator – http://www.pdfmaker.co.cc
Coool!! Thanks for the info 🙂
Coool!! Thanks for the info 🙂