PDF - Where, Why and How
Why bother with a PDFPDFs are immutable. Once generated, they cannot be edited without special PDF editing software. Where every office will be equipped with Microsoft Office, or an equivalent, PDF editors are far more esoteric. Even if you possess such a piece of software, e.g. Adobe Acrobat, the creator of a PDF can set permissions on a given document which describe who can change the document. In this way, your PDF documents can be made unchangeable, which is a characteristic desirous of many document types, e.g. invoices, quotes, financial statements.
PDFs are the perfect way to share information: it offers a dependable electronic format for information exchange. For example, we have a PDF generator built into ICTpoint which allows anyone to turn any article into a PDF for their own perusal or to share. PDFs are viewable on any kind of computer, too. All you need is Adobe Reader, which is downloadable for free. Lastly, you can include keyword tags and a description in your PDF, which makes it searchable by the big search engines on the web.
So how do I make a PDF
Adobe provide a proprietary tool for creating and editing PDFs, called Adobe Acrobat . If you intend on doing lots of PDF creation and editing tasks, Acrobat is the tool to go for. However, if your PDF needs amount to transforming existing documents to PDF, you can get all you need for free.
PrimoPDF is a free download PDF creator. When installed, it appears on your computer as a printer. You will be able to select it instead of a printer in any application. This means that whatever you send to print will turn into a PDF instead of printing to paper.
OpenOffice.org has a PDF writer actually built into it. In any application within the OpenOffice suite, you will see a PDF button nearby to the print and save buttons. The only thing you need to do is specify where to save your new PDF. It could not be easier.
Adobe Reader is Adobe's free download. It allows you to open and read PDFs, but not edit them. Adobe Reader is ubiquitous in today's computing environment, so you need have no fears that your audience cannot access your PDFs.
