Creating PDF files

You can include all sorts of documents in your website but often these may require your visitors to have the same application installed to make use of them. A free and very useful alternative is to make PDFs(portable document format). Most computers (and many modern mobile phones and PDAs) can already open PDF files but if required your visitors can download free PDF reader software (Acrobat Reader) from http://www.adobe.com/reader (you may wish to provide a link to this on your site).


MANY MODERN APPLICATIONS CAN ALREADY CREATE PDF FILES (you should only install the PDF software below if you can't make PDFs). More recent versions of Microsoft Office include the option to Save as type PDF.

Making PDFs is easy and free. If you have a PC and your application can't output PDF files (check the application first) there is a free utility called CutePDF which creates PDF files from Word files (and other applications).
For more information see http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp  

To get started download and install both these files:
http://www.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.exe
http://www.cutepdf.com/download/converter.exe  

Once installed creating PDF files simple. Open up your existing document (e.g. in Microsoft Word pre 2003 version) and start to print your document but instead of using your usual printer choose CutePDF. As it is for web use please select low quality (depending on your version you may get the option to select dpi in which case select a quality of 72dpi. Others such as 600dpi are excessively large for reading on-screen and produces very large files. 72dpi will in most cases be fine for standard printing). Rather than a piece of paper coming out of your printer it will ask you where you wish to save the PDF file. Select somewhere you can easily locate (e.g. your My Documents folder or Desktop) and give the file a meaningful name.

You can then upload the file to your File Library to include it in your site. Once the file is in the File Library follow these instructions for linking to it from a page.