Adobe® Acrobat® 8 PDF Bible

Chapter 7. Converting Files to PDF

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the PDF creation process

• Converting application documents to PDF

• Creating new blank PDF pages

• Converting to PDF from within Acrobat

• Converting scans to PDF

• Converting Web pages to PDF

• Converting to PDF from templates

Unlike almost every other computer program, Acrobat was never designed to support creating new files and editing pages to add content. Where Acrobat begins is with file conversion to the PDF format. Users start with a document authored in another program and the resulting document is converted to PDF using either tools from within Acrobat or tools or commands within programs that support PDF conversion from native documents.

With Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Professional, the number of methods you can employ for converting documents to PDF is enormous. Any program file can be converted to PDF through a number of different methods offered by Acrobat, operating systems, and many different authoring applications. The method you use to convert a document to PDF and the purpose for which the PDF is intended require you to become familiar with a number of different options at your disposal for PDF file creation. This chapter begins a new part of the book entirely devoted to PDF creation. In this chapter you learn basic PDF conversion methods available in Acrobat Professional and Acrobat Standard. The following chapters in this part cover more advanced PDF creation methods.

Setting Up the PDF Creation Environment

You create ...