Section 4. Create PDFs from Microsoft Office

4. Create PDFs from Microsoft Office

Before You Begin

1 Create a PDF in Acrobat

See Also

6 Insert Pages

7 Extract Pages

26 Secure a PDF File with Password Protection

42 Create a Bookmark

45 Generate Bookmarks from Structured Documents

You can create a PDF document directly from a number of Microsoft Office applications, such as Word and PowerPoint. In fact, you don't even have to exit an Office product to create a PDF. If Microsoft Office is installed on your computer when you install Acrobat, the Acrobat installer adds a set of macros (collectively referred to as PDFMaker) and a new toolbar to your Office applications. The net result is that three new buttons ( Convert to Adobe PDF , Convert to Adobe PDF and Email , and Convert to Adobe PDF and Send for Review ) in your Office toolbar area and a new menu ( Adobe PDF ) in the menu bar. The Adobe PDF menu contains three commands that correspond to the three new toolbar buttons, as well as a command to change PDF conversion settings.

1.	Open the Source Document Open a document in Microsoft Word. The settings for all Office products are similar, but Microsoft Word has the most options, so step 2 assumes you have opened a Word document. If you are converting an Excel or a PowerPoint document, you can ignore the explanations of the Word and Bookmarks tabs. NOTE If your Microsoft Office products were installed after Acrobat, the Adobe PDF buttons and menu do not appear in your Microsoft Office products. However, you can add them with a few easy steps. Just launch Acrobat, click the Help menu, and select the Detect and Repair command. This launches the Acrobat installer, reinstalls any damaged or missing functionality in Acrobat or supported source applications, such as Microsoft Office products.
2.	Select Conversion Settings From the Adobe PDF menu, select Change Conversion Settings . In the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog box are four tabs from which to choose: Settings, Security, Word , and Bookmarks . The Settings tab allows you to change the PDFMaker settings before converting a document. The Conversion Settings drop-down list lets you choose from a variety of default conversion settings. Of the available settings, most users stick with Standard , although you might want to use High Quality or Press Quality for PDFs that will be output to high-end printers or Smallest File Size for documents that will be viewed only online. There are also check boxes you can deselect if you do not want to view the finished PDF, set a name and location for the PDF, or transfer Word document information to the PDF version of the document. NOTE When converting a document to PDF, the file is automatically saved to the same folder as the source file. The PDF is saved with the same name as the source file, but with the .pdf extension. The Security tab allows you to set a password to restrict opening, printing, or editing the document. It gives you the same options available when setting document security in Acrobat. See 26 Secure a PDF File with Password Protection for details. The Word tab has features that enable you to choose to convert comments to notes, convert cross-references and table of contents to links, and convert footnotes and endnotes. Also on the Word tab is a Comments box that displays comments on the document. On the Bookmark tab, you can choose which Word styles you want converted to Acrobat Bookmarks. Obviously, this is useful only if you have conscientiously applied styles throughout your document. But if you have, it's amazingly handy to have your newly generated PDF file already populated with bookmarks. KEY TERM Style A set of formatting instructions that can be quickly applied to selected text. Styles are a common feature in word processing and page layout applications.
3.	Convert to PDF From the Adobe PDF menu, select Convert to Adobe PDF or click the Convert to Adobe PDF button in the toolbar. The PDFMaker macros start and the document is converted to PDF format. Toward the end of the process you are presented with a standard Save dialog box in which you can enter a name and specify a different location for your new PDF.
4.	View the Result When the PDF is created and automatically opened for viewing, press the Page Down key or click the Next Page button at the bottom of the document window to view the newly combined files.

NOTE

The Create Adobe PDF button and command creates a PDF of the default view for your document. If you want any view but the default (such as Word's outline mode and PowerPoint outline, notes pages, or handouts), you will not be able to use the PDFMaker macros. Instead, you need to print the document to the Adobe PDF printer driver as described in 5 About Creating a PDF from Other Applications .