Section 3. Convert a Website to a PDF

3. Convert a Website to a PDF

See Also

46 Organize Bookmarks

One very cool feature of Acrobat is its capability to create PDFs out of entire websites for archival purposes or for viewing at a time when you might not have Internet access (such as on a long airplane flight). Acrobat does a good job of capturing the information in the website, although it doesn't always get the formatting right.

1.	Specify a URL From the File menu, select Create PDF , From Web Page . In the Create PDF from Web Page dialog box, enter the URL of the web page you want to convert. Or, you can click the Browse button and navigate to a previously saved web page on your computer.
2.	Select Settings In the Settings section, choose how many levels deep into the website you want Acrobat to go to retrieve pages. Choosing 1 level downloads only the specified URL. Choosing 2 levels downloads the specified URL plus any pages you can link to from the specified URL. Obviously, the deeper into the website you go, the bigger the resulting PDF will be. If you choose to download the entire site, Acrobat warns you it might take a long time and also create a very large file.
3.	View the Result Click the Create button and Acrobat converts the web page(s) to a PDF. Depending on the complexity of the web page ( especially if frames are used), the PDF version will probably not exactly match the web version. However, the bulk of the text and graphics should display correctly and the links should all work as intended. Acrobat creates bookmarks of all the pages (see 42 Create a Bookmark , for details on working with bookmarks), which you can click to jump to a specific web page. TIP Acrobat asks how you want to view linked web pages (in your browser or downloaded into a PDF file) only the first time you click a link in a PDF, but you can access it at any time by going to the Edit menu, selecting the Preferences command, clicking Web Capture in the Categories list, and selecting either In Acrobat or In Web Browser from the Open in drop-down list. Whichever way you set Acrobat to open web links, you can toggle how a link is opened by holding down the Shift key as you click it.
4.	Test the Links You can also click any link on any of the web pages. If the page has not already been downloaded into the PDF, Acrobat prompts you to choose between downloading the link and viewing it in Acrobat or launching your web browser and viewing it there.