Use doPDF To Convert Documents To PDF (Windows)
I guess I got very used to working for the man and the perks that come with it. I have had Adobe Professional on my desktop and laptop for a long time now. When I had to create a quick PDF from a word document on a client’s site - after my laptop suffered from battery drainage I had some issues.
I quickly Googled around looking for a free, easy solution. Lots of places claimed to do what I wanted but the first one that did it EASY and FREE was doPDF.
It is a small download, less than 2MB and when it finishes installing you will have a new printer added to your system. When you need a PDF, all you need to do is “print” to the new doPDF printer. (It can be accessed using File -> Print menu in pretty much any Windows program i.e. Word, Excel, Paint, some image viewer etc.) I know I make it sound simple and all - but it really is THAT EASY!
If you don’t believe me and you are too lazy to try it yourself check out this video courtesy of doPDF…
This is simply awesome. Do you use something other than Adobe Acrobat Pro to create PDF’s? If so and it is free we would LOVE to hear about it. Why don’t you leave your favorite PDF creator in the comments!
By Karl L. Gechlik of http://www.askTheAdmin.com. Karl is a super hero of the IT industry and helps answer free tech support questions at his website. Stop by and tell him MakeUseOf sent you!
Looks good but have been using CutePDF for some time now with no problems.
Only issue with CutePDF is that it requires you to download and install a converter from their website as well to get it to work.
Just means it’s a two part install process.
Will give this a try though.
Love your site, keep up the good work.
Punchy
Looks like a great PDF creation alternative. I’ve been using PrimoPDF, but if the video is any indication, this looks quite a bit faster.
I have been using CutePDF for a LONG time. It attaches itself to the printer just like doPDF and it creates PDF files in seconds. Has never failed me.
I have been using doPDF for a long time now and it has worked perfect everytime.
I used PrimoPDF for a long time, but recently converted to Bullzip PDF Printer. There was a 4 or 5 sceond lag with PrimoPDF, but Bullzip opens up right away. It allows me to control the name and destination of the output, and it just works great.
I use a map program to figure out how to get to clients, “print” to a PDF file with Bullzip. That file opens in PDF XChange, where I can edit the document to include client’s name/phone/apartment number and any other comments.
Bullzip and PDF XChange are both free.
Bullzip is here: http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php
PDF XChange is here: http://www.docu-track.com/downloads/users/
I like the 100% free version of Solid PDF Creator from http://www.freepdfcreator.org because it has good settings for optimizing the trade-off between size and quality. For example “Web” vs “Professional”.
This one I using for a long time eases our task of converting any page to pdf ,I had found no problem converting to pdfs of even in regional languages pages are looking pretty no problems .
I tried both CutePDF and doPDF, both worked great.
The mentioned tool and other suggested tools worked fine, but sacrifice the doc file reference links, those used for Table of Contents, Figures or Tables hyperlink. MS Office 2007 maintains ‘save as PDF’—that works fine, but for previous MS Office software have no such feature and no Add-ons from Microsoft.
Is there any free pdf converter tool, that also keeps the reference links?
Thanks.
PDFcreator is one of the few that I’ve found that keeps the internal links from a table of contents, as well as external hyperlinks (see meggva’s comments below).
openoffice.org’s pdf function also maintains links
additional comment from ‘youthworker’ (added by Editor):
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My apologies- seems PDF’s made with PDFcreator doesn’t include hyperlinks after all.. I used to use pdf995.com’s free product (which also installs ‘print to pdf’ buttons in MS word etc), but found the nag screens excessive. It does, however, save hyperlinks and the Table of Contents links. Bullzip’s product (http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php) has an impressive range of features, including saving external hyperlinks, but not the internal TOC etc links you describe. Nowadays, I just use openoffice.org, which saves everything beautifully.
(Comments wont nest below this level)i use http://www.doc2pdf.net free online webbased doc 2 pdf converter.
works perfect!
I have used CutePDF for several years at home and at work and it’s worked well for most things. I’ve also used PDFCreator off Sourgeforce http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ with good results for the past several monthes as well. It only requires the one package and produces slightly smaller PDF files in some cases.
I came here to say that I’ve been using CutePDF for a while now and love it!! I was beaten to the punch by a number of others, but I thought I’d say it anyhow!
Wow. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned using Open Office yet… or if they did I apologize. It’s still early for me.
Open Office does a fairly good job with pdf conversion and the latest release has given us more pdf features. It’s all also free.
I will definably check it out! I did not know that. Thanks Mangoliasouth!
I’ve had good success with the free Solid PDF Creator product.
the current version of DoPDF still does not do what a PDF printer is supposed to do, and what pretty much every other PDF printers routinely do — with DoPDF the resulting PDF files depends on all fonts being installed on the computer viewing it.
the whole purpose for using PDF’s is to sidestep the issues fonts can cause, WTF’s the point of this program?!?
at the very least they need to put a large disclaimer on their site and in the program, that explains to the unsuspecting user that the program does not work properly.