Adobe Acrobat surrogate

[Dan in Saint Louis]

There was a discussion here a while back about a replacement for Adobe Acrobat. Do I remember FoxIt being mentioned?

I need only modest composition capabilities, mostly would use it as a "Print To:" after composing the document in Word or Excel. Has FoxIt Creator (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/creator/) worked well for you? Is the "Editor" version worth the extra money?

Thank you!

[Mike]

I'm not familiar with FoxIt, but if it doesn't meet your needs, I would recommend checking into Nitro PDF (http://www.nitropdf.com/index.asp). For $100, it claims to be compatible with Acrobat.

[sidney]

I need only modest composition capabilities, mostly would use it as a "Print To:" after composing the document in Word or Excel

Wouldn't you only need a PDF printer (which is a pseudo printer that looks like a printer driver to any Windows program but outputs to a PDF file instead of to a real printer) rather than a substitute for Acrobat with PDF editing capabilities? It's been a while since I did such things on a Windows machine, but there are free PDF printer programs such as PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) and CutePDF (http://www.cutepdf.com/) that I used to use.

Also, OpenOffice (http://openoffice.org/) is free, will read and write Word and Excel files, has all the word processing and spreadsheet abilities that they have and has an Export to PDF function.

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Wouldn't you only need a PDF printer ... free PDF printer programs such as PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) and CutePDF (http://www.cutepdf.com/) that I used to use.
Yes, I have PDFCreator installed right now. It does not seem to honor my page margin requests. I'll have to try CutePDF again, I can't remember why I deleted it.

Also, OpenOffice (http://openoffice.org/) is free, will read and write Word and Excel files, has all the word processing and spreadsheet abilities that they have and has an Export to PDF function.Great idea! I'll have to try that. It is reported to falter on some of the Excel formatting capabilities, but perhaps my needs are simple enough to avoid that.

Thanks!

[Dan in Saint Louis]

I'll have to try CutePDF again, I can't remember why I deleted it.
CutePDF looks pretty good, except that it wants to add the document margins to the printer's "unprintable area" thus changing the overall size.

I can manually tell it to "print at 100%" but I will have trouble remembering to do that.

[MollyM/CA]

Which Word? The accursed 07 can do a 'save as' or maybe it's an 'export' to a PDF file -- the few I've done seemed just like the originals. I think it was an add-on free from (doubly accursed*)MsOffice Downloads.

Might be worth checking the MsOffice site to see if there's an add-in for your version of Word.

* but maybe Ms's greed to horn in on every piece of software ever invented is our good luck

Just opened Excel07 for the first time and it has a "save as" to PDF which must have been bundled with it or the add-on gave the capability across Office.

m

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Which Word? The accursed 07 can do a 'save as' or maybe it's an 'export' to a PDF file
2003, and likely to stay that way for a while. I'm having a problem parting with the cash for a version whose main feature seems to be ribbons.

[Mike]

...or the add-on gave the capability across Office.
Yup. The add-on works across the board.

However, the resulting PDFs are not as crisp as those produced by Acrobat, and they are larger in MB.

(I have Acrobat Pro because a former employer obtained it for me, and I got the latest version for the upgrade price when I bought this computer. It's better than nothing, but I think the other options for creating PDFs are more efficient.)

[Dan in Saint Louis]

However, the resulting PDFs are not as crisp as those produced by Acrobat, and they are larger in MB. ... a former employer obtained it for me
I just remembered that MY old employer also bought me Acrobat 5. I'll bet after I reinstall it I will find that it does CREATING PDFs just fine. I will still need the free reader because v5 won't read the output of the newer versions now in common use.

Thank you for nudging my memory!

[Mike]

I just remembered that MY old employer also bought me Acrobat 5. I'll bet after I reinstall it I will find that it does CREATING PDFs just fine.
You're welcome. It should co-exist with the newer reader without any problem.