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#1 |
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practical experience, FTW
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 263
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How do I make a PDF file?
My novel is written in Microsoft word 2003. The cover of my book is Photoshop (or PNC). Now I entered the ABNA and I have the option to get a free printed copy of my entry, but it says the files uploaded have to be PDF. Anyone got any advice on how I would go about converting them to that format?
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#2 |
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Inclined to eclectic eccentricity
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 490
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If you don't have Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Flash Paper, you can do it online at http://createpdf.adobe.com/ which lets you do 5 for free. There is also a free PDF writer called CutePDF, but I've never used it: http://www.cutepdf.com/ and I think OpenOffice can do PDF files as well.
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#3 |
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Writing Anarchist
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: lost among the words
Posts: 27,581
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Adobe's website used to have a feature that, if you signed up, you got 5 (I think it was) free translations into PDF. That was a few years ago, but they might still do it.
Word 2007 has the feature built-in, if you know someone who has Word 2007.
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"For unheard of means that it's undreamed of yet; Impossible means not yet done." --Julia Ecklar "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." --Friederich Nietzsche
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#4 |
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figuring it all out
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Atlanta Ga
Posts: 59
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Easy PDF
The easiest way to create a PDF is to get a free GoogleDocs account, paste your cover and book text into a Document. Then go to File > Download as > PDF. I've done this several times for projects and for my clients projects. It always works like a charm.
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#5 |
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Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Entebbe, Uganda
Posts: 9,302
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Microsoft will let you download a free pdf maker for Word 2003 (or at least it used to. They might have stopped supporting that since Word 2007 came out).
The latest version of Open Office allows save as pdf, but I've not used it and I don't know if you need additional plug ins.
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#6 |
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Fear the Death Ray
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: wgasa
Posts: 43,746
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I didn't want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself. -- Agatha Christie ![]() ![]() The Pacific Between • A Bunch of Stories (2006 IPPY Award) WIP: Beyond the Banyan Tree - draft 9, 125,000 words Home Page | Blog | Reviews |
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#8 |
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Ididdit
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Wisconsin's (sore) thumb
Posts: 9,917
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PDF Creator *sigh* stickeeeeeeeeeeee
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Inspiration can be as destructive as any other form of fire. |
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#9 |
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'Twas but a dream of thee
El Jefe
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Out on a limb
Posts: 19,130
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Stuck.
Thanks, all.
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#10 |
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A Gentleman of a refined age...
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Out side the beltway...
Posts: 7,974
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Wow, learn something new everyday here.
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Knowledge is learned while wisdom is earned. ![]() Currently working on... From, The Tales of Netherron, Book 1, A Game of Pawns Book 2, Pawn takes Queen, Book 3, Pawn's Gambit, In the pipeline, Children of Netherron, follow up trilogy Guardians of Netherron, prequel trilogy http://nickanthony51.wordpress.com (on hiatus) Nick Anthony |
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#11 |
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kimochi warui
P&CE Ombudsman/Arbiter/Thingamajobbie
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Posts: 26,529
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And in the interest of the stickie, in case any Mac users have the same question, it's as simple as:
File -> Print (Cmd + P) Then click the PDF button and choose "save as PDF." |
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#12 |
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New Fish; Learning About Thick Skin
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 5
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If you own Acrobat you can create PDFs from virtually any program that can print. Once you've installed Acrobat, you'll find that you have a new printer driver called AdobePDF.To give it a quick trial run, open any document, choose the AdobePDF driver and print. It will ask you to supply a name for your PDF file. Give it one, click OK and you've made a PDFYou can also convert any valid PostScript file to PDF using Distiller manually
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Debt Help |
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#13 |
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figuring it all out
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Yankeetown, Florida
Posts: 72
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I'll also recommend PDF Creator. It's a tidy little program that lets you print ANYTHING as a PDF. Get it from SourceForge.net here http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Works like a champ.
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Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein |
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#14 |
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Banned
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: The Best Place In The World...Absolute Write!!
Posts: 2,369
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I just click save as in my document and click PDF or XPS, but then again I have Word 2007, so...I had Word 2003 five years ago and I don't remember if they give you that option. I never had to make a PDF five years ago, so I didn't quite look into that. I used to use DocPDF when I didn't know I had that option in Word '07. It's easy, you just make DocPDF your printer, or one of them for that matter, and if you have another printer installed, make sure you have DocPDF selected as your printer before you go to save it as PDF, click Print, and it turns your Word document into PDF for you. You have to wait until it opens in your Adobe Reader, and then it's done. Otherwise the document won't be converted. It takes a while depending on how many pages your document has. My 500-page novels formatted in 4x7 book size would take me about 2 mins.
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#15 |
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Ididdit
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Wisconsin's (sore) thumb
Posts: 9,917
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I'd also like to put in a good word for Nitro PDF. I've been testing it lately, and it is my current default reader. It is good for converting almost anything to PDF, and one of the best I've ever used for extracting text or images. It can extract text intelligently, better than Adobe, producing a plain text file with very few unnecessary line breaks.
LOL, how to make and unmake a PDF.
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Inspiration can be as destructive as any other form of fire. |
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#16 |
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Benefactor Member
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Posts: 3,527
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Fiction blog as Manuel Royal: Donnetown Today or Recently (or a Long Time Ago) Fiction column under my real name: Welcome to Smyrnings ; continued as Spland of the Splost |
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#17 |
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an Eric Dolphy fan
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: AW. A very nice place!
Posts: 8,327
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... I bought ABBYY PDF Transformer two years back for $90. Works well. No need to make the investment though with the options above. I do have to say that one of the reasons I made the investment was that some of the freeware didn't always work, including Adobe's free 5. My docs got bungled in the conversion. I was doing nonstandard stuff though with charts and whatnot. With straight text, conversions would probably go fine with freeware 99 times in a 100.
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#18 |
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Never Let Go
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Earth
Posts: 90
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i still don't get why microsoft word is so popular, I still like openoffice better, just file->save as-> export to pdf.
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#19 |
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New Fish; Learning About Thick Skin
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 31
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Why has nobody mentioned Google Docs? Simply upload and save it as a PDF.
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#20 |
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Gentleman. Scholar. Bastard.
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Semi-sunny Victoria BC
Posts: 3,581
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cough*post#4*cough
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http://robertjwiersema.com/ Black Feathers -- 2013 Walk Like A Man -- 2011 Bedtime Story -- 2010 The World More Full of Weeping -- 2009 Before I Wake -- 2006 |
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#21 | |
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Ididdit
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Wisconsin's (sore) thumb
Posts: 9,917
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Quote:
LOLz @ belated mention of the Google trick
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Inspiration can be as destructive as any other form of fire. |
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#22 |
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Cultus Gopherus MacAllister
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: þone þe in meoduhealle
Posts: 22,648
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Not to be err, boasting, but .pdf generation is built into Mac OSX at the system level.
Any app that can print or save can generate a .pdf. If you know how to use Terminal, you can include/not include fonts, or generate a variety of postscript files. Not that, you know, I'm bragging . . .
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#23 | |
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kimochi warui
P&CE Ombudsman/Arbiter/Thingamajobbie
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Posts: 26,529
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Quote:
Select the files, select all (Cmd + A) and open them (Cmd + O) in Preview. In Preview, select all the images again (Cmd + O), and then go to File->Print Selected Images. Then do as I said in post #11, and click the PDF button and Save as PDF. Voila, your pictures are now joined together into a PDF file. Dunno how often the rest of you find yourself in that situation... but I find it pretty useful. |
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#24 |
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figuring it all out
Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 60
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I have found while a lot of these work great, many of them don't convert hyperlinks well. If you have hyperlinks, the only thing so far that has worked well is adobe itself, but you only get five for free.
Google docs works, but it adds their *funny-looking* hyperlink, that is plain ugly. Does anyone have any recommendations for one that also converts hyperlinks (free)?
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#25 |
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Newb for life
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 143
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Another vote for CutePDF. it installs as a printer on your computer, so you just select print (from any program) and you use the cutePDF printer. Once it "prints" you get a dialog box prompting you to save your pdf file. I like it a lot.
edit: don't recall how CutePDF handles hyperlinks.
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“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” - Michelangelo |
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