You might think that in order to create a PDF document, you have to purchase expensive software. That used to be true - while Adobe Acrobat Reader is freeware, the professional version of Acrobat (which can create PDF files) costs several hundred dollars. That’s not a problem when you want to create PDF documents as a part of your business activity and (for example) you hope to earn a few thousand dollars for an e-book you’re going to publish. But if you’re not going to make money out of PDF documents, the software prices will surely stand in your way. Right?
Wrong!
Looking for the free tools…
There are two free tools that can help you creating PDF documents for free: pdf995 and pdfedit995. Both of them are freeware and can be downloaded from www.software995.com . Both files are quite small (less than 10MB altogether), so even 56k modem can handle the download. As soon as you install both of them, you can start your work.
And using them!
The procedure is simple - you prepare your document in MS Word or another word processor. As soon as you’re satisfied with the document, you click the “Print” and choose PDF995 printer. If you don’t have such an option, please reinstall pdf995 and try again. If everything goes fine, the text will be printed into a PDF file. If you don’t like the general looks of the document, simply correct it using its MS Word version and then convert it again into a PDF format. Just remember that you need to be a little more cautious while formatting the text in MS Word - page breaks after each chapter etc. - otherwise the first PDF document you create will certainly not look as good as it might.
The second program, pdfedit995, becomes handy only if you need to make some specific changes in a PDF document, things that can’t be done by MS Word. For example if you want your PDF documents to have working links instead of just URL’s, run pdfedit995 and choose 'Auto-Convert URL's to links' option. Of course the program can do much more than this simple thing, but as it’s a little more complicated in use than the pdf995, it’s a good idea to learn all the details from its manual.
As you see, creating PDF documents can not only be free - it can also be pretty easy!
