Oct 20 2008

4 Free Ways to Create PDF Documents

 The PDF (portable document format) document has become a standard for distributing documents electronically. Almost anyone either has a PDF reader. PDF’s can contain images and hyper links, but cannot be easily edited, making them perfect for everything from contracts to marketing materials. Many companies sell full fledged applications for editing and creating PDF’s, however, if you just need create a basic document in PDF form, I have found 4 good free solutions.
 
More information on the first three choices can be found in my post Save hundreds of dollars with Free Microsoft Office Alternatives
 
Web Based Tools
 
1. Zoho is a web based office suite that allows you to create documents & spreadsheets, save them on the web, and export them to various formats including PDF. (They have a choice to export  presentations to PDF, but it gave me an error when I tried it.)
 
2. Google Docs is also a web based office suite that allows you to create document, spreadsheet and presentation and export them to PDF. 
       
 
PC Based Tools
 
3. OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that installs on your PC. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application (and more). Any of the documents that it creates can be exported to a PDF.
 
4. Primo PDF is a free pdf printer application. It allows you take a document from any application and convert it to a PDF from the print menu with a ‘printer’ that creates a PDF document. The nice thing about Primo PDF is that it lets you make a from any application that you can print from (Web Browser,Drawing, etc) not just a specific application. Primo PDF also allows you to set security on the PDF so you can’t cut and paste or print the PDF.

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