How to print documents to pdf [closed]

I like to print PDFs of my documents. I've been using PDFCreator. Is this a good choice, are there any better solutions?


CutePDF Writer is working well for us (way less flaky than the slightly old version of Acrobat we are running at work, anyway)

EDIT: There is also information in the CutePDF FAQ about using parameters to change the print quality/file size settings which we have found useful for larger documents.


I prefer PDFCreator over the other tools. Much more flexibility than the others but probably is an overkill for simple purposes.


Using the built-in Export to PDF option in OpenOffice.org has one VERY major advantage over anything that simulates a printer: it creates clickable table of contents, cross-references, indexes and explicit internet links. Of course, most PDF viewers will recognise some URLs and email addresses. But when linking some text to some URL, most PDF printers do not make that into a clickable link. That's simply because the print processor does not "tell" the PDF printer about this.

As a side note: on a Mac, PDF is very much integrated. Still, when using OpenOffice.org on a Mac, one should also explicitly use Export to PDF -- using the Save to PDF option from a Mac's print dialog does not create clickable links. However, some other Mac programs do in fact somehow send such information to the Mac's print processor, through the print dialog. For example, when saving to PDF using the print dialog in Pages, Safari or OmniWeb (the latter being non-Apple software), all links are in fact clickable. (On a Mac, when one does NOT want clickable links when saving a web site as PDF, one should in fact use Firefox instead.)

By the way: getting a clickable table of contents is a very good reason to learn how to use styles and headers. One should never have to create a table of contents manually!


If it's Office 2007 applications that you're printing from, there's an add-in to provide a Save as PDF option:

Office 2007 Save as PDF Add-in