Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
PDF files are a convenient and easy way to save documents for viewing almost anywhere. If you can print a document, you can create a PDF of it.
Some time ago, I decided to go as paperless as I could. My recommendation of the ScanSnap document scanner was a big part of that and it allowed me to completely empty three drawers of my four-drawer file cabinet, saving documents digitally instead.
Once you're in the habit of creating PDFs from paper documents, the ease with which PDFs can be used, saved, searched, and, perhaps most importantly, backed up becomes readily apparent.
As a result, I've also cut down on the amount of actual printing that I do by changing my default printer to the free Cute PDF Writer virtual printer.
It's not at all uncommon to want to save something, say a sales receipt from an on-line purchase, by printing it. But it's rare that you actually need to save it on paper. Instead, I print to the Cute PDF Writer printer which creates a PDF of the printed output that I save on my computer. If I need to actually print it to paper, either now or sometime in the future, I can simply load up that PDF in a viewer, such as Acrobat or Foxit, and print to my real printer from there.
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Here, you can see the printers that I have installed on my desktop computer:
While you can see that there is a "real" printer installed for when I need it, the default printer is CutePDF Writer.
Now, when I print something, say a web page that I'm viewing in Firefox, the Print dialog first shows me that Cute PDF Writer is the printer:
Once I actually press OK to print, Cute PDF Writer displays the Save dialog so that I can specify the location and file name of the final PDF:
You can then open your newly created PDF document in your PDF reader:
It's as simple as that. And the beauty is that any document that you can print can also be printed to PDF. Save receipts, archive email, collect web pages for research, share whatever you find ... whatever you can think of, Cute PDF Writer might well be a useful and tree-saving tool.
I recommend it.
(This replaces my original recommendation PDF Creator published May 5th 2009. Due to "foistware", I can no longer recommend PDF Creator.)
Article C4831 - May 30, 2011
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
@Tom
Posted by: Mark J at October 31, 2011 11:54 AMAccording to what you are writing, I'm not sure whether Cute PDF is actually saving this information, or if the properties are just indicating where the file is located on your computer, and the owner field is referring to who has permission to access the file. This is not necessarily information stored in the file.
If it is saved information, I don't know how to prevent CutePDF from saving it in the PDF it creates, but if you are using Windows 7, and this might also work with Vista, you can right click on the file, and click on Properties, then click on the Details tab then click on Remove Properties and Personal Information and that should create a copy of your file without any identifying information. With XP, you might need a third party utility.
My PDF files on my desktop are shown as files not recognized even though I have Cute PDF Writer installed. How do I make the Cute PDF Writer my default PDF reader? I would like not to have to write click the files in and chose which application to open them with.
Thanks,
Peter
30-Nov-2011
@Peter
Posted by: Connie at November 30, 2011 9:25 AMSet your file associations and then your computer will know which default program you wish to use to open files. The following article is about the Vista operating system, but also has the keystrokes for XP, and a list of related articles at the bottom.
Setting File Associations in Windows Vista
For some reason when I hit the cutepdf print button in firefox 9.0.1 (latest) to print a long web page, it only prints p.1 even though the print all pages box is ticked.
Similarly when I click print preview for my non digital Brother printer, it only finds page 1.
I have a new computer, Windows 7 Home Premium Acer Aspire 5750G 32/64.
I wonder what is happenning? Many thanks.
Posted by: fascinated8 at January 21, 2012 4:52 PMHi, Sorry. I have fixed the "not printing all pages" problem. I right clicked on the page to be printed. saw a word in the context menu that said "frames". I moved the cursor to the right and saw various options including "Show this frame only" (or similar), which was underlined. Clicked that to turn off, and now all 29 pages are printed by cutepdf. But now when I right click the web page the word "frames" and its options is no longer in the context menu. Oh well, at least all pages show and can be printed!
Posted by: fascinated8 at January 21, 2012 5:15 PM