PDF Printers, What They Are, And How To Use Them

For those of you not familiar with the term PDF Printers, here is a quick and simple explanation.

Once you have installed a pdf printer (also known as a virtual PDF printer driver) your list of printers will now show the pdf printer name. See the image above. Notice that not only do I have my standard printer - an epson stylus, but there are other options as well. DoPDF, DeskPDF, NitroPDF etc.

All you need to do to use one of these (once installed) is to select it from your list of printers, and print to pdf rather than to paper or file.

Most pdf printers will install an icon in your word processing software, so you don't even need to search for it.

If you don't see the PDF icon (as shown above, I have four different ones here), then you should be able to enable it in MS Word, by going to View/Toolbars then checking the PDF Printer that you want.

How to use a PDF printer

The trick to creating a good pdf, is to start off with a good word document. Sounds logical doesn't it? And it is logical, just like the old saying "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". Or if you prefer, "you can't make honey out of dog s**t".

That means taking care with things like TOC, headings, images, good layout etc. See the MS Word tutorial page for a few tips and tricks.

You can do a lot of editing of your PDF once it has been created. But it is far better to do most of that prior to converting.