Comments on: Adobe Create PDF/Share Review

By: adnan

adnan — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:25:24 +0000

im confused… ive so far converted 7 files to pdfs.. but theres no indication given that i cant keep converting… i was under the impression that im allowed to convert only 5 files??

By: Curtis Carmack

Curtis Carmack — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:26:05 +0000

You might also try BCL’s free conversion service at:

http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf/

It’s free and works on office docs up to 2 MB in size. If you want to convert PDF to Word, try:

http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/index.asp

I’ve used BCL products off and on for years and gotten pretty good results.

By: Anelly

Anelly — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:37:21 +0000

Yep, PDF files are useful and have many advantages. The best think is the security level you can take advantage of.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:03:21 +0000

Thanks for your point of view Mark. Usually one tends to think every other has the same or more knowledge than we have… and it is true that for many users it is way easier to upload a file than installing a printer driver (not to say looking for it!)

By: PDF Creation Test : Productivity501

PDF Creation Test : Productivity501 — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:33:24 +0000

[...] creation tool and posted some comparison PDFs. He found some problems with formatting using the CreatePDF [...]

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Sun, 10 May 2009 14:45:08 +0000

@Carlos – If you have something that OpenOffice won’t render correctly, you might have better luck with this service. Obviously it isn’t for everyone, but for someone who isn’t very technically savvy and needs a quick PDF it might be useful–particularly if you are on a computer where you can’t install software.

@Anon – Thats what I do. And I have the full version of Acrobat as well.

@Robert – Hm the size changes are more dramatic than I would have expected.

By: Robert Dyson

Robert Dyson — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:58:50 +0000

I can’t speak for OpenOffice, but in the case of printing to PDF on the Mac, the file size ended up being the same as the original doc.This Adobe Create site shrank my PDF by 50%, and in the case of their older site at http://createpdf.adobe.com/ it shrank it by 97%.

So, this service can be used to optimize PDFs.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:21:33 +0000

As said, OpenOffice exports any text, drawing or spreadsheet directly to PDF with several options.

There are excellent free converters that are simply installed as a printer driver (my favoriteis PDFill).

Both, and dozens more, are free, unlimited and can work offline. So what is the point of this service??

By: anon

anon — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:24:09 +0000

Or you could just own a mac and click print.

By: Robert Dyson

Robert Dyson — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:49:54 +0000

Apologies, I didn’t link to the current Adobe PDF Create:
http://createpdf.adobe.com/

By: Robert Dyson

Robert Dyson — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:34:26 +0000

Great article, very slick interface. In terms of functionality though, I’ve been using the current Create Adobe PDF Online website for quite a while. Note, you only get 5 free conversions.

I converted the same Word doc which contains several photos and is 6.2 MB with the current Adobe PDF Online and the new one. With the current website I was able to choose to optimize for Web, no such option in the new version.

Original doc size: 6.2mb
Current Adobe PDF Online: 164kb
New Adobe PDF Online: 3.7mb

In addition, the New site messed up some of my formatting, such as a bulleted list and did not preserve web links.

Hopefully Adobe will take what they already have in the (fairly outdated, but much more functional) Create PDF Online and incorporate it into the new version.

I have uploaded the three docs (Original, New PDF site, Current PDF site) to drop.io for comparison.

http://drop.io/createadobepdf

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:24:34 +0000

OpenOffice can work in MSWord doc format and can save files as PDF… and it’s free.