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Best Free PDF maker?

Hi, all. I'm sort of surprised to find myself in the Windoze forum, but that's how it goes I guess.

I'm getting fed up with people sending me documents that I only need to read in their Microsoft Office format. Usually, .doc and .xls are the culprits but today I received a .pub. A freakin' Publisher file! So, I'm instituting a new "idiot" reply for such folks, and I wanted to see what you Windows users are using for making PDF's. (It's built into OS X as it should be.)

There are only three requirements:

  1. Free
  2. Easy to download and install.
  3. Simple to learn and use.

A quick search of VersionTracker didn't turn up anything with user ratings, so I am reticent to recommend any of them.

TOPICS: Windows
jason.mcbrayer's picture

PDFCreator should work. Out of...

mwr;9395 wrote:
PDFCreator should work. Out of the box problems with Vista, but the Wikipedia article links to a fix or two for that. For XP and earlier, should be no problems.

I second the recommendation for PDFCreator. Makes generating PDFs almost as easy on Windows as it is on Linux :P Also a handy solution to a wide variety of printing ills (since you get to print from Acrobat Reader, which offers a lot more options for printing than many other programs), and if you have cygwin, you can use ghostscript and pstools to convert to PostScript and do other manipulations (like page reordering for book printing).

 
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Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Making Time

3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line.