Section 5. About Creating a PDF from Other Applications

5. About Creating a PDF from Other Applications

See Also

1 Create a PDF in Acrobat

2 Create a PDF from Multiple Files

You can create PDFs from virtually any software application. As long as you have Acrobat installed on your computer and the application from which you want to create a PDF has a Print command, you can create a PDF from that application.

You can also create PDFs using the Export or Save As command in many applications, especially image editing and page layout applications. For example, Adobe InDesign has an Export command specifically designed to let you output PDF versions of your page layout documents with a wide variety of custom PDF options. Adobe Illustrator makes it even easier, allowing you to select PDF as one of the file format options in its Save As dialog box.

Regardless of whether an application supports direct export/save in PDF format, you can always print the file to PDF by selecting the Print command in whatever application you are working in, changing the printer to Adobe PDF in the drop-down printer selection list, and then clicking the Print button. Your application sends the document data to Adobe Acrobat Distiller instead of to a printer, and Distiller creates a PDF version of the file and prompts you for a name and a location in which to save it. For more information about Distiller and how it differs from Acrobat itself, see 77 About Acrobat Distiller .