Pdf and excel/word

[Jvester]

Hi

Sorry for the English hope you can understand the question

Have just switched to mac from windows but have some problems.


What I want is to:

1 Print a word document to pdf (black white)

2 Print an excel sheet to pdf (merge with number 1 and in black white)

3 Print an excel sheet for pdf (merge with No. 1 and 2 in black white)


In Windows environment, I could do this by using a virtual printer (pdf xchange).

Is there anyone who knows how to do this in word and excel in mac?

In advance thank you.

Sincerely

Jannik

 

[organicCPU]

Basically nowadays you won't need an additional virtual printer on Mac for this anymore. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed, you can use its PDF export functionality, but you can get it done with just plain macOS.

1.) Select Print from the menu, then choose PDF from the left bottom menu in the printer dialogue. That will print the PDF in colors. If you want black and white (or greyscale?) then you can achieve that by applying a Quartz Filter. Usually you utilise those Quartz Filters during real printing. If you want this get happen during PDF export, you need to create an Automator Workflow. That's just a few clicks...
Open Automator, make a new Workflow, select "PDF" from Action library set, select "Apply Quartz-Filter to PDF", choose the Quartz-Filter (Black and White), Save your Automator Workflow as Workflow.
Then select the printing dialogue again, where you could export as PDF (left bottom) and choose the last option "Edit menu...", select your new custom workflow and use that instead of "Save as PDF".
This is just a basic recipe that you can even more fine tune, but it should do what you want.

2.) and 3.) There is also an Automator action for combining PDF files that you can play around with. I think you'll be able to manage this as well. Here is a good resource for learning Automator. I personally prefer a command line tool (PDFtk Server) for merge pdf actions by shell scripting combined with AppleScript, but I guess Automator is easier for the beginning.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Hey -

There are lots of ways. On a Mac you don't need any other tools to create PDFs...it is included in the OS. Automator is great, but you don't have to use it if you only have a few documents to get done.

Just select Print, and then use the PDF options in the lower left corner of the print window to save as PDF. Save all your Word and Excel documents as PDFs.

Next, open all the files you want merge with Preview. When you see all the documents they way you want them grouped together, save the document.

Now you can use Export... and select PDF, and quartz option. Test Black and White and Gray Tone to see which fits your needs.

Done.

 

[Jvester]

Thank you both.

I have used the second option and it works.

But think in the future I will use the Automator as I have a lot of pdf files. Must say that Automator looks very good.

Thank you very much once again