Many times we produce
wonderful documents which have
to be sent off to someone
electronically (eg. via
e-mail), only to find that the
recipient cannot open them.
This usually happens because
they do not have the program
which we used to create the
document. Adobe solved this
problem long ago by creating
the
PDF format. Any relatively
modern computer can open PDF
documents, usually through the
use of the free Adobe (Acrobat)
Reader program which is
available for all the popular
computing platforms. Mac OS X
users don't even need
Acrobat Reader... the OS
includes a wonderful program
called
Preview which opens PDF
files, amongst several other
things.
What many people
don't know however is
that OS X allows you to
easily create PDF documents
from any application that can
print. So let's say that
you've used your
accounting program to produce
an invoice which you'd
like to e-mail to someone or
you've create a
magnificent spreadsheet
document that needs to be put
on a CD for someone (but you
don't want them to alter
it). You can easily create a
PDF of the document which you
know the recipient will be
able to open and read (but
not modify).
Here's how you do
it:
1. Open the document
you wish to create a PDF out
of.
2. Select
"Print" from the
File menu (or press Cmd-P for
most programs - depending on
the program you're doing
this in, the menu options may
differ from those
shown):
3. When the print
dialog appears, click the PDF
button near the bottom-left
corner. This applies to Mac
OS X v.10.4
"Tiger", if
you're using Mac OS X
v.10.3 "Panther",
click the "Save as
PDF" button (not shown
in this dialog):
4. Select "Save
as PDF..." from the
pop-up. Again, this applies
to "Tiger", not
"Panther". As you
can see, "Tiger"
has many more PDF options
than
"Panther":
5. Finally, in the
save dialog, give your new
PDF document a name and
navigate to where you want it
saved then click the
"Save"
button:
Now you can copy the
new PDF document to CD, flash
drive, etc. or attach it to
an e-mail to send it off to
the recipient. It will look
exactly as it would if you
were to actually print it to
paper, but will be in the
form of an electronic
document. Remember, PDF
documents
usually
cannot be altered
without specialized software.
OS X's Preview does let
you highlight and add text to
PDFs, but not change the
content otherwise.
Gordon Gonsalves,
2006
gordon@rightent.com
