SmallBizResource Blog -- Software

Free Tools to Convert Files to PDF

Posted by Gayle Kesten Wednesday, Mar 19, 2008, 02:09 PM ET

Confession: Having used up my five free PDF document conversions on Adobe's Web site, I created a new email account so I could get another batch gratis.

Doing so was truly against my better judgment, but it was the most convenient (read: lazy) option given my credit card was out of arm's reach. And caught up in a frenzy of productivity, I needed to convert a Word document to a PDF at that VERY moment. (Click here to see how easy the service is.)

Fast forward, oh, say, 22 hours, and what do I find among my saved Google Reader items but a blog about a pair of free tools that convert documents to PDF format. For one -- Microsoft's Save as PDF or XPS utility -- you have to have Office 2007, which I do, so I gave it a try. The download process was painless, and within five minutes the add-on was part of my Office suite. I opened an already created Word document, hit Save As and, voila, PDF was among the choices. The utility also converts files saved in Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, PowerPoint, Publisher and Visio.

The second tool is Arco Software's CutePDF Writer. The software involved a quick download that required me to OK a second program automatically downloaded from Arco. No sweat. Again, I opened another Word file already on my hard drive; to save it as a PDF, I hit Print, then chose CutePDF Writer from the name dropdown. When I clicked OK, I was told to choose where on my computer to save the PDF. Kinda weird to me that this works through the print function, but it worked just fine nonetheless.

Honest.

Software