Is there any thing available that will allow me to print to a PDF file? I'm trying to export something to a PDF file that does not have the feature as standard. I know it can be done in Windows as there are a few Print to PDF applications. but I can't find a Mac one.
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Print to PDF
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Apart from Microsoft Office apparently. God only knows why or how they mucked that up.
I suggested it to a user in another thread a little while ago and was told that Microsoft buggered it up in 2008. No surprise there then.
Bear in mind it is second hand information, although I see no reason why they would lie about it.
Just tried exporting an excel file as a PDF. It worked fine, except when the 'save' box is open the default name for the document is
'document-name.xlsx' as opposed to 'document-name.pdf' so I have to change the extension.
'document-name.xlsx' as opposed to 'document-name.pdf' so I have to change the extension.
I rarely use Word or Excel, but it seems from my experience that Microsoft has a thing about not using OSX's built-in preview -- they implement their own. Perhaps this is why Word doesn't support the standard print-to-pdf function in OSX.
No they just want to kill Office for Mac and make it into a joke to protect their Windows monopoly.
I only have Office 2004, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to upgrade to 2008.
At the moment aside from gaming (which is rapidly becoming console only) there are virtually no advantages (the crap version of Mac Office is pretty much the only one) software-wise of using Windows as a consumer, but there are definite advantages of using a Mac such as Delicious Library, so they definitely have motive.
Thanks for the info.I don't know what ya'll are on about, the PDF menu is there in Mac Office 2008...
Glad to see Microsoft 2008 still supports this, as it is a standard feature on the print dialog.
It's not about Microsoft supporting it, the Mac OS X platform is PDF based as it always has been since inception so as long as the application in question is printable you could always save to PDF.
This is not necessarily true. Applications can bypass the standard print dialog box, and some do.
Thanks IJ.
As those of us who have been using Macs for a while know, some companies choose to not use standard dialog boxes for whatever reason.
Here is the straight skinny on Microsoft Word 2008 and PDF:
- Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker 8.1 toolbarDoes not work.
- Adobe Distiller 8.1 (cgpdftops CUPS filter) print driverWorks.
- File>Print...>PDF (Quartz PDFContext)Works.
- File>Save As...>PDFWorks. It uses Quartz PDFContext just as File>Print...>PDF.
There is all sorts of good stuff that you want from Application PDF support. Hyperlinks, TOC, Index, Forms, Thumbnails, Rich Media, Book Creation tools, transitions, and probably a bunch more, but that is sufficient for now.
The print dialog is not enough for a lot of applications, and at the end of the day, Many of those applications are in the office suite.
Thanks IJ.
As those of us who have been using Macs for a while know, some companies choose to not use standard dialog boxes for whatever reason.
Could you please name some companies or apps that don't use the standard print dialog box where the PDF feature would not be available?
I've been using Macs (probably a lot longer than most of you) since Mac OS 8.5 and I've been using Mac OS X since the beta version and I have never ran into this.
If you had bothered to actually read my post, then you would know that you are not limited to using the File>Print... dialog box.
I would think that you'd have to actively write some rather clever code to stop PDF printing from working in your application. This is very hard to mess up unintentionally.
Adobe InDesign, for one. I don't know about the current version, but version 2.0 has a non-standard print dialog box which does not include the print to PDF option, among others. I believe this approach is common with Adobe applications, or at least it was.
Since OS support for printing to PDF started with OSX, I don't know that length of Mac use is really an issue here, but if it matters, I've been a Mac user since 1984, and over the years I've seen quite a few applications which monkey with the core services of the OS, such as printing.