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General discussion

Seeking recommendations for 'free' PDF Maker

May 23, 2010 11:29PM PDT

I have been using an old version of Adobe Acrobat which will not run under Windows 7, and it also has far more features than I need just to create pdfs from Word. So I've looked at some of the freeware that's around, but would like a recommendation of a good one.

What I've found is that compared to Acrobat, they don't seem to do much compression, or maybe I just haven't found the right settings. Using a profile called "Smallest File Size", Acrobat will reduce a 1.6MB .doc file with embedded images to about a 65KB .pdf. PDFCreator, as an example, produces a 450KB pdf. Same story with CutePDF.

I want small files to save wear and tear on my newsletter readers. Any suggestions, either for an application, or for suitable settings?

Thanks in advance

Perry B

Discussion is locked

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Seeking recommendations for 'free' PDF Maker
Jun 3, 2010 3:16PM PDT
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It is really a hard work
Jun 3, 2010 7:19PM PDT

You can refer to Acrobat to make the PDF file smaller by sacrificing the resolution of the images of PDF files. But there will be a limitations, just as you said that. Maybe you can use WinRAR to compress the file once more. If that way can hardly meet your need. You may try to split the file using special application like PDF Splitter, which would help you split your file into some smaller ones. Then you can easily add them in your email attachments. Hope it helps and be well.

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Best PDF Creator
Jun 29, 2010 1:49PM PDT

If you're looking for a cheap PDF Creator program be sure to check out http://www.mcburrz.com/pdfcreatorsuite.html where they have a product called PDF Creator Suite that uses several open source PDF programs. The benefits of using these is that they are much less expensive than Adobe (only $7.95 to download), and they come with features like merge multiple files to PDF, split PDF into multiple PDFs, create PDFs, and even compression, which will come in useful if you are looking for small size PDFs.