One of the very most basic things that you can do with Adobe Acrobat is create a PDF file. And this is kind of where the whole process starts. Let me talk to you a little bit about why you create PDF files so that you can understand the importance of them.
It’s kind of represented by this folder here that I provided you. It’s the Lesson Four folder in the Part One series of the Project Files that you’ve loaded on to your hard drive.
Here we have a PowerPoint presentation, a Word document, a Budget document, a scanned Memo that’s a TIF file, and if you open up this folder here, you’ll have an In-Design file. These are all files that I might want to share with somebody but in order to do so, I have to make sure that they have the applications that I do. Plus I also have to make sure that they have the same fonts that I do, the same versions of the applications that I have. There’s a lot that goes into it. Never mind the fact that if I give somebody a Word document that’s a proposal, they can go on and change that document at will. These are all things that I’m going to use PDF to prevent. But first, I need to convert them to PDF. And that’s what the topic of this lesson is going to be.
We’re going to cover seven different ways to create a PDF file from information that you might have on your computer or elsewhere. And we’re going to start with probably the most commonly known method for producing a PDF file, and to do that, I’m going to launch this Lewiston East.RTF file. It’s a Rich Text File and it’s going to open in Word because that’s what my computer happens to use to launch Rich Text Files. But I’m actually using Word here as a proxy for every other application on the planet. Well if you have Acrobat installed, the answer is almost always yes because if your application can print, it can produce a PDF file. Let me show you how.
After you’ve installed the Acrobat onto your system, and you choose File Print, which I’ll do here, a printer called Adobe PDF will show up in your printers list. And it might not be your preferred printer but it will certainly be in the list and it’s a printer that you can choose. What’s happening here is that Acrobat has fooled the system into thinking that it’s in fact a printer when really what it’s going to do is capture the information that you would have send to the printer. It will churn and convert it into an Adobe PDF file that you can then use as a file on your computer.
The rest of the process is simple. I’ll click OK. Acrobat’s going to ask me where I’d like to save the file and I could click Save. I’m going to hit Cancel though because I’m not quite done yet. I have a little bit more control over the process and I want to talk to you about that. If I choose File Print and I come back in here, I’m going to click on the Properties button. Now this is a Windows machine. This functionality is available to a Macintosh as well. The Print dialogue box looks a little bit different on a Macintosh but you get the same functionality. On a Macintosh, look for the Copies and Pages Pull Down Menu and what you’re going to be seeking are the PDF Options choice among them. Either way, when you click on the button or you make that choice, you have the opportunity to choose your settings. These, what are called default settings, determine the kind of PDF that you’re going to create. Now I don’t mean it’s going to be a happy or a sad PDF or a green or a blue PDF. What you’re really choosing is how the conversion process is going to handle the information in the PDF to give you either a very, very small file or a full blown high quality print version of the document.
In most cases, if you’re creating a PDF for general consumption, you’ll probably want to choose Standard because that will produce a PDF file that’s appropriate for Laser printers, Inkjet printers, your kind of common standard document use. So that when someone takes this PDF file, uses their version of Acrobat or even their free Reader to print it, it will look pretty good but it won’t be such a huge file that they won’t be able to download it, or grab it through your website. There are a couple of other choices here that you’ll want to consider, and what I like about Acrobat is that it’s pretty chatty. If I roll over one of them, it will give you a little balloon to tell you that, in this case, select this option to add username and the document information to the PDF. That’s just document information that gets embedded into the PDF as what’s known as metadata.
It’s often a good idea to take a look at your PDF right after you create it and so almost always, I’m going to want to check that selection and leave it selected. Now it was selected by default so I really didn’t have to do anything but I wanted to point it out. Once you’re done, click OK, and nothing will happen. What you’ve done is you’ve actually configured the way Acrobat is going to handle the conversion to PDF for this document and any other that comes after it. If you want to change that, all you need to do is, as a part of the print process, remember to go back to Properties, open the Dialogue back up and make some changes. I’ll select OK because I’m comfortable with those. I’ll select OK, and I’m going to go ahead and save this down to the Desktop just so I know where it is, click Save, Acrobat will do its job and then open the file so that you can take a look at it. Now you’ll see that it converted the fonts, it converted the letter spacing, it converted all of the information that was important about the document into a document that I can now share with somebody, and all that somebody needs is a copy of the free Adobe Reader to open, view and print this file.
That’s pretty powerful technology but that’s not the best or the only way to produce a PDF file. It is a way though that you can know you can create a PDF no matter what application you have as long as that application allows you to print.
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