Wednesday, November 22, 2006

PDF Online

Portable data format (pdf) files are usable by so many applications it's nice to have a way to create them. If you have a lot of cash you can buy a copy of Adobe Acrobat. If you only need to create an occasional PDF file PDF Online is a free alternative that will convert the following file formats to PDF and send them to you via email -

-MS Word (DOC) -MS Publisher (PUB) JPG, PNG

-MS Word (RTF)

-MS Excel (XLS) BMP, TIFF
-MS PowerPoint (PPT) -HTML (MHT) WMF, EMF
-MS PowerPoint (PPS) -Text (TXT) GIF

This service comes in very handy if someone sends you, for example, a MS Publisher (PUB) file but you don't have that program. By using PDF Online can convert the .pub file to a .pdf file and view it.

The company that makes this service available BCL Technologies has a lot of other interesting sounding applications and has worked with a lot of well known companies to develop software to fit their needs. I thought the program to convert a .pdf file to a Microsoft Word document sounded useful in some instances.

If you do buy a copy of one of the versions of Adobe Acrobat try to get it via a group license e.g. from your college bookstore or a group license agreement through your place of employment. The individual user prices for Adobe products are pretty steep for most non-business casual users.

Another free alternative for creating pdf files would be to try OpenOffice, which, according to some people, is becoming a credible contender in the office software suite arena.