PDF's and the Freebie Everyone should have!

I am sure you've all heard the term PDF, and have used PDF viewer to look at PDF document at some point, and you may have not even realized.

Here is a little bit on what PDF is!

PDF stands for  Portable Document Format. It was created by Adobe Systems  as a step towards the "Paper Less" Office way back in 1991.  PDF was first official released in 1993.

 I won't go into all the history of the life of a PDF because that will get pretty boring, really fast. But if you are interested in reading more on how PDF evolved, you can go here for an in-dept look at PDF.

Why is PDF useful?


The #1 reason PDF is useful is for sharing your documents.  Not every computer user has the latest version of Microsoft Office, or Word Perfect on their computer.  Some people prefer Microsoft Office, other may prefer Word Perfect or some other type of word processor.

So here is the big problem for most people.  You are applying for a new job and you have prepared your cover letter and resume in your preferred word processor. You email your cover letter and resume to the email address supplied by the company your are applying to, pretty simple and pretty easy right.. Then the tragedy strikes!  The company can not open your documents because they don't have your program, and have requested that you send it in their preferred word processor format.

Now you are hardly going to run out to your closes store that carries software and purchase the software they use. That wouldn't make much sense.  So what do you do!!!!  Embrace the world of PDF!!

Solution


Here's your solution...  You can create a PDF of your cover letter and resume and send those to the company.  It's safe to say, that today every computer has some sort of PDF Viewer.

So lets get started.. the first thing you are going to need is something to create a PDF for you. You can pay up to $600 - $700 for  Adobe Acrobat software, or... you can download a free program called PDF Creator.

PDF Creator is a small little free program. You can download the latest version from the official website pdfforge.org

When you have the program installed , it will add a new printer to your system called PDF Creator.  Now to to turn any of your documents to a PDF, all you need to do is open up your document and print it.  When you  are prompted to select a printer choose the PDF Creator and continue on.

PDF Creator will do its thing and pop up a little window where you can type in a document title and then save the output.   This make your document into a PDF and you can share it with who ever you need to with out worrying about if they can view your work.

If you don't have a PDF viewer on your computer, the two most common ones to use are Adobe Reader or Foxit PDF Reader.  I like Foxit because it isn't as big as Adobe, and doesn't want to update every few days.

On another note, some word processors have the ability to create PDF's by using the SAVE AS  or Export to PDF feature normally found under FILE  in your word processing software.


One last thing is that once your document has been converted it virtually can not be edited. I say virtually, because if you are lucky enough to have the proper software, a PDF can be edited.


Hope you find this somewhat useful