Creating Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) Documents

Creating Adobe Acrobat documents requires a copy of Adobe Acrobat. You may or may not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer. Being able to read Acrobat documents may mean that you have just the free Acrobat Reader installed, instead of the full Acrobat. (Things would be semantically simpler if Adobe had called the full version of this product Acrobat Writer.) The instructions below will step you through creating an Acrobat document, and help you determine if you need to get a copy of Acrobat.

Short version: Select the Acrobat printer and print your document there.

Long Version:

1. Open the document you wish to convert to Adobe Acrobat format with whatever application you would normally use to work on that document. E.g. for a Microsoft Word document, open it with Microsoft Word.
2. Pull down the File menu and select "Print" (or do whatever else you do to print in your application).
3. You should see a dialog box that allows you to, among other things, select the printer you want to use. You need to select the Adobe Acrobat printer. Its exact name will vary depending on what version of Acrobat you have, and there may be more than one Acrobat printer listed. The most common name is "Adobe PDF", as shown below.
   
   Selecting the Acrobat printer in Microsoft Word 2007
   
   If you do not see an Acrobat printer, then you need to obtain a copy of Acrobat. Contact your technical support personnel for assistance. Acrobat, unlike Acrobat Reader, is not free.
4. If you DO see an acrobat printer, then select it and print the document. A box should pop up asking you where you want to save the new .pdf file. Save it somewhere logical on your computer. The file will normally open in Acrobat after it is created.
   
   Saving a new PDF file from Microsoft Word 2007

Notes

• Acrobat has a LOT of options available when you click on the 'Properties' button in the printer-selection dialog box. The default settings tend to make very high-quality (and very large) files. This is especially true if your files contain graphics. If the .pdf files you create are very large, click on 'Properties', select the 'Adobe PDF settings' tab, and pull down the 'Default Settings' list, and select "Smallest File Size" (see below)
  
  Adjusting file size/quality of new PFDs

Special recommendations for PowerPoint files

There are a couple of additional settings you should select to get the best results from Microsoft PowerPoint files.

Recommended PowerPoint settings

For PowerPoint files, it is recommended that you select "Pure black and white" under "Color/grayscale" in the lower left corner. This will drop out any backgrounds used in the slides, and convert all of the text to black. This is very useful if you have used light-colored text on a dark background - it will make the printouts much more legible. In addition, going to black and white will reduce the size of the files produced.

It is also recommended that you pull down the "Print what" list, located on the left edge towards the bottom, and change the selection from "Slides" to "Handouts". In the "Handouts" box to the right, change the number of "Slides per page" from 6 to 3. This will create printouts that are highly suitable for students taking notes. These two tips also apply when printing out presentations. These tips cannot be accessed if you click on the "Create PDF" button that Acrobat sometimes installs in Microsoft Office applications, so be sure to always create your PDFs through the normal print dialog.