Looking to print PDF files, but don’t want to pay the big Adobe price tag? Read on…

Apr 27
11:48

2012

Alan D. Crowetz

Alan D. Crowetz

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A free alternative to the paid versions of Adobe Acrobat for simple PDF creation solutions.

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Adobe PDF files are portable,Looking to print PDF files, but don’t want to pay the big Adobe price tag? Read on… Articles convenient, and great for distributing documents that you might not want others to edit as it gets passed along. The format has become so popular, that Microsoft has even included the option to save documents as PDF’s in Office 2010! (Now that’s saying something..)

But what happens if your computer does not have Office 2010, and you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional? All of these products are expensive starting at over $300 just for the standard standalone version of Adobe Acrobat. There’s no reason to spend this much just to print a PDF file here and there; several companies have come out with solutions, but the cleanest one I always find is CutePDF. CutePDF has a range of PDF creation products, but their free PDF writer installs itself as a printer you can send your documents to, which in turn asks where to be saved. You won’t be able to directly edit existing PDF’s or make other PDF items such as forms with selectable fields, but it will get the basic job done.

To obtain CutePDF, simply head over to http://www.cutepdf.com/ and select the CutePDF Writer “Free Download” link. Once downloaded, install the application, and allow the second application bundled with the software to be installed (it is called PS2PDF). There should be no restarts necessary.

To use your new PDF writer, simply create whichever document you wish to turn into a PDF in the application of your choice. Once ready to turn it into a PDF, select the print option and choose the CutePDF Writer printer which is now installed. After a few seconds you will be prompted for a filename and location to save; remember this location and save your PDF! You now have created a PDF you can share as needed. Enjoy!

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact the team here at Infostream @ http://www.infostream.cc/