Word PDF Distiller

[AJ]

I have Office X for Mac and want the ability to create PDF documents. Before
I run out and buy Adobe, I was told there is the capabiliy in the Office
version I have but cannot seem to find it, any ideas or comment?

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

I have Office X for Mac and want the ability to create PDF documents. Before
I run out and buy Adobe, I was told there is the capabiliy in the Office
version I have but cannot seem to find it, any ideas or comment?

Office doesn't have a PDF capability. Making PDFs is built into Mac OS X,
and the option should show up in any Print dialog. It may say Print to PDF
or it may have the icon for the Preview program, which is the Mac PDF viewer
(and creator?). Mac Help from the Finder should give you more information
and tell you how to use this feature. Look for help for Preview.

Some do prefer Acrobat, it can produce smaller files and you have more
control over some options, but that would depend on your needs, obviously.
Acrobat may also have more capabilities to manipulate files--joining 2 PDF
files into one, etc, though I think there's also some inexpensive utilities
out there that can handle that.

Acrobat installs a toolbar in Office that can be misinterpreted by some as a
built-in feature.

Others are likely to chime in with more info....

DM

 

[Elliott Roper]

Others are likely to chime in with more info....

What Dayo says, plus..
If you have an eps image, Word will give the low res eps preview to
print to pdf instead of handing over the eps.
In OS X 10.3.mumble's print dialog choose output options->save to file,
choose postscript save. Then open that file in Preview and save it as
PDF. That tricks Word into temporary sanity.

Me, when I have to send Word docs to the dark side, I send a PDF too,
so at least they know it looked OK when it left. To tell you the truth,
I don't think most of them notice the difference. One of my customers
will carp about every misplaced comma in a subordinate clause, but
couldn't see a river if he fell in it. He also thinks Times New Roman
is a typeface.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi AJ,

As Dayo and Elliott pointed out you can use File>Print and choose to
save the output as a PDF file in OSX.

If you wish more features you can go full boat and use Adobe Acrobat,
which insists on putting its annoying toolbar into all of your Office
applications.

There are in-between options, too.

Just head to Versiontracker <http://www.versiontracker.com/> and put pdf
into the search box. There were 5 pages of programs dealing with PDF
files there when I checked just now.

-Jim

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

Hi AJ,

As Dayo and Elliott pointed out you can use File>Print and choose to
save the output as a PDF file in OSX.

If you wish more features you can go full boat and use Adobe Acrobat,
which insists on putting its annoying toolbar into all of your Office
applications.

There are in-between options, too.

Just head to Versiontracker <http://www.versiontracker.com/> and put pdf
into the search box. There were 5 pages of programs dealing with PDF
files there when I checked just now.

-Jim

Since we are on the subject. I'll bring up an item that has been brought up in the
acrobat newsgroups about Acrobat 6. And I'll give the person a warning.

First the warning. unless you want to cry a river and kick yourself - Get The Pro
Version of Acrobat 6. The standard version is a waste of money unless you just
create "occassional" Pdfs. If you need forms creation, it only in the Pro version
be it Mac or PC.

Now to the item brought up in the Acrobat formum on the Adobe server.

Its seems all application on earth play right when it come to creating pdf's that
have section breaks, pages breaks — except OfficeX and Office2004. (there was no
reference to older products but have a feeling older products have the problem back
to 5.1 since the underlying code for all versions of Office documents are identical
except for differences in Interface related to viewing on screen and key mappings,
regardless of Platform.)

The problem is that when acrobat comes across either a page breake or section break
acrobat will stop at the first instance of such.

So if you have a 200 page document if you need to create a new section or page break
you'll need to key in appropriate returns to create the breaks and not use page
break or section break.

the experts on the acrobat forum state that MS use non-standard codes for theses
options.

On one hand I can see their point. As Bill Gates hates worth a passion the thought
of using indistry standards. He wants the world to follow his standards, instead of
him following the worlds standards.

But knowing this has been this way probably forever, as to why Adobe hasn't figured
out how to interpert these codes, Sinces Office software is the most popular in the
world is beyond my comprehention. I've pointed this out in the Acrobat newsgroup.

best I can remember though is that e.5.0.5 and Office2001 doesn't have this problem.

Fortunately I don't create very long documents so I usually just insert returns to
make text go to another page.

any comments as to whether this is a problem of non-standrd codes or is adobe
blowing smoke?

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[AJ]

Hi Jim,
Thanks to yopu Dayo, Elliott and Phillip, you all have contributed to finding a
solution to my issue.
Have a great weekend.
AJ