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Replies (7)
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Why PDF
Hi Philip
Contrary to any appearance of ignorance, your point is a very important one. Whilst this article didn't go into details of the 'why', we have been very careful to try and cover it elsewhere on the site. Have a look at our feature article on the '3Rs':
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=151390
There is also a 'user story' that looks at why a four-partner firm of accountants creates and uses PDF files:
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=151538
I hope that helps.
Regards
Simon Hurst
Purpose of pdf files
Forgive me for appearing ignorant but like so many technical articles, the author assumes that the reader has a certain level of knowledge.
Could someone just tell me why one would want to create a pdf file. What advantages are there over retaining or e-mailing documents in their original programme formats?
Good to hear about other tools
Hi Simon,
Obviously there was an element of devil's advocate in my comments since you only mentioned Adobe products in the articles I saw, and I'm delighted to hear you are going to contrast and compare some of the lower cost options. PDF is such an important interchange format, and practices need to understand the possibilities.
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
PDF and Acrobat Zone
Thanks for all the comments so far. Just to deal with David Terrar’s questions.
1. “Who is going to install Acrobat Professional?” – Well, I’m hoping that the articles that we publish in this zone will help people decide that for themselves. Those who only need to create the occasional PDF file may well be happy to use one of the many cheap or free PDF creators such as those referred to in the existing comments. It's worth adding that whilst Acrobat Professional does indeed cost about £395, upgrades from previous versions are just 1/3 of the price and of course there are cheaper Acrobat options. Have a look at our ‘3Rs’ article:
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=151390
2. “Wouldn’t it be more helpful to highlight the lower cost ways you can create PDFs?” – This Zone is intended to help accountants discover ways to use PDFs in a more sophisticated fashion, rather than to choose a PDF creation tool. Have a look at our ‘welcome’ article: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=151389 . We discussed PDF creation to ensure members had the basic knowledge to take advantage from the other articles in the Zone. We are working with Adobe to create the Zone because we think that Acrobat offers excellent functionality of great relevance to the AccountingWeb community. Thanks to David for highlighting some of the other PDF creation tools – we will return to a comparison of the functionality offered by the various products in a later article.
Regards
Simon
How about lower cost options?
Who, apart from somebody involved in serious publishing, marketing or design work, is going to install Adobe Acrobat Professional at £395 or whatever the street price is these days? Wouldn't it be more helpful to highlight the lower cost ways you can create PDFs with Scansoft PDF Create! or even the free download PDFCreator at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
Free pdf creator
I heartily recommend Primo pdf for creating pdf files. It's free, easy to install and very easy to use. Get it here http://www.primopdf.com/
Then any file you want to create, you simply select Primo as the printer and save the file to the folder of your choice.