Hey
Technically this post is about saving documents as a PDF, but you must be able to print it first, but that headline doesn’t sound quite so cool. This is a rather simple tip, but it is very useful when you want to save something out as a PDF and don’t want to use something like Adobe or any other programs which tout PDF saving capabilities.
The way to access this method is to go to File > Print. Set up any application printing setups as you would if you were going to print a document. Once as you go through all of the required dialog boxes you should reach something which is similar to the image below. If you click the down arrow by the printer you can access all of the printing options, which you can of course play around with.
What you will notice is a small PDF button. If you click this button you get access to saving the document as a PDF, as well as other options if you want to use them.
Once as you click save you can configure the PDF options, such as applying passwords to open, save, copy parts of the document. Once as you hit save a PDF will appear in the location you specified. Simple.
I love this new feature. It makes sharing documents with friends a lot easier. There is no more need to make it compatible with there version of Word etc. My friend, who uses Windows, was annoyed that this feature wasn’t available to him. He had to go and install a program to give him some similar functionality which didn’t work half as well.
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Very nice tip. I used this actually last night and figured it out then and love it but i do have a prob with it. Do u know how to get rid of links at the end of pdf’s? Some pages do leave links at the end. Thanks in advance if u do know.
This is VERY old news. The size of those PDF is often way too high to mail them.
More intresting is the “Compress PDF” Quartz filter you can find in the Colorsync section of the print dialog box, or alternatively in the “Save As” of Preview.
You will find the compression is actually too deteriorating for pictures in your PDF documents. You can make a new Quartz filter with in Utilities>ColorSyc Utility and then creating a new filter with “Image compression”. I set it to 75% and it gives very good results.