MS Word to PDF conversion

[KB3JWK]

I'm using Word 2003 and need to convert the document to PDF format. Any suggestions?
Tnx/73
de Rick
kb3jwk

[kx8c]

For $100 you can buy one of any number of PDF conversion utilities that will do this, and a whole lot more. Google "Word PDF Convert".

[KG4RUL]

Try this one:

Cute PDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp)

And the price is right - Free!

[W3MIV]

Upgrade to Word 2007. It has PDF support built into it. If you are a home user, you can buy the MS Office "Home and Student" 2007 (Word, PPT, OneNote and Excel, but sans Outlook) for $150 and put it on three computers.

I use it, and the PDF output is excellent; it also produces XPS documents, though I don't use that flavor, and the files are incredibly compressed -- much smaller sizes than in 2003.

[k3wrv]

Download a free copy of OpenOffice.org writer. It's semi M$ Wierd compatable (except when Bill Gates fiddles with the formats) and will export to PDF, just fine.

[AC0H]

DO NOT INSTALL OFFICE 2007!!

We have a pilot program of about 500 users and they are having all sorts of problems. If you do have problems and want to go back to Office 2003 start hunting up the Windows XP disk. You're going to need it.

[KB3JWK]

KG4RUL, thanks! Got that program and tried it, silly name but it works great and is really simple to use! You may have just saved my club newsletter from being late!
73 de Rick

[KC4RAN]

Free online conversion tool (https://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp)

[KG6YTZ]

Quote[/b] (k3wrv @ Jan. 23 2008,05:03)]Download a free copy of OpenOffice.org writer. #It's semi M$ Wierd compatable (except when Bill Gates fiddles with the formats) and will export to PDF, just fine.
Seconded. #OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) is a free suite which includes a Writer [similar, but not identical, to MS Word], a presentation tool , a spreadsheet [Calc, like Excel], a database, a math package, and a paint program. #The Writer will export to PDF and to many other formats [including HTML].

And it's [i]FREE. #http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif #It's also open-source, so if you're a programmer, you can make any modifications you feel like making. #If you're not a programmer... #Don't worry, you don't need to be one. #Just grab the installer [please note that this is a 120MB file!] and install the features you want. #[Me, I need only the Writer and Impress, and I only use Impress for viewing the occasional .PPS e-mail attachment.]

Can't download something that large? #Order it on CDROM (http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/#USA), or just ask someone here to burn a copy and mail it to you. #http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[W3MIV]

Quote[/b] (AC0H @ Jan. 23 2008,09:28)]DO NOT INSTALL OFFICE 2007!!

We have a pilot program of about 500 users and they are having all sorts of problems. If you do have problems and want to go back to Office 2003 start hunting up the Windows XP disk. You're going to need it.
I am running it on two computers here, a laptop running XP Pro and a desktop running Vista. I have had no problems at all, and I use MS Word professionally every day -- I use the other programs less heavily, but I have been running MS Office 2007 for more than six months without a single incident.

[w8gtf]

There's a program called "PrimoPDF" http://www.primopdf.com/, that was free the last time I checked. #It will install a virtual printer on your computer. #Then any document that you are displaying that allows you to be printed can be printed through this virtual printer. #The virtual printer outputs a PDF file of whatever the original document was.

[n6hcm]

Quote[/b] (KG4RUL @ Jan. 23 2008,05:54)]Try this one:

Cute PDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp)

And the price is right - Free!
Cute PDF is awesome ... the price is right and you can create a PDF from anything you can print.

I have Office 2007 and it's been trouble-free here. The default file format it uses isn't backward-compatable with Office 2003, but you can tell Office 2007 to save in a format that Office 2003 can read. Easy peasy!

[AC0H]

Quote[/b] (W3MIV @ Jan. 23 2008,16:29)]Quote[/b] (AC0H @ Jan. 23 2008,09:28)]DO NOT INSTALL OFFICE 2007!!

We have a pilot program of about 500 users and they are having all sorts of problems. If you do have problems and want to go back to Office 2003 start hunting up the Windows XP disk. You're going to need it.
I am running it on two computers here, a laptop running XP Pro and a desktop running Vista. I have had no problems at all, and I use MS Word professionally every day -- I use the other programs less heavily, but I have been running MS Office 2007 for more than six months without a single incident.
You're in the minority.
I'd say half our pilot program users want out and back on 2003. They report it doing "funny stuff that 2003 never did". I'm running it on my Wishta box at work. It isn't nearly as stable as 2003 is. Alas, MS is still expecting their customers to do the beta testing.

We can spend a minimum of 1 hour per PC hacking the registry trying to remove all vestiges of Office 2007, re-install 2003 and hope it works, or re-image the machine in 20 minutes.

That's just bad programming.

[N6WK]

What sort of problems are they having?
I purchased and installed office 2007 and I find it Wonderful.
Of course, I take the time to learm how to use it. Still, I am interested to know what problems they are having.
Are they Software problems or End User problems?

Thanks,
Gordon

DO NOT INSTALL OFFICE 2007!!

We have a pilot program of about 500 users and they are having all sorts of problems. If you do have problems and want to go back to Office 2003 start hunting up the Windows XP disk. You're going to need it.

[M0DSZ]

Download a free copy of OpenOffice.org writer. It's semi M$ Wierd compatable (except when Bill Gates fiddles with the formats) and will export to PDF, just fine.

(THAT SHOULD BE A QUOTE....MADE A BIT OF A "PIGS EAR" OF IT).

I second this idea. Open Office is good for other things as well, I've made very accurate labels with the spreadsheet for example whereas Excel was all over the place.

[w2nsf]

You can convert any document to PDF with a Mac.
Comes with the operating system.
What could be simpler? :D

[kf6rdn]

If you want to view PDFs without that bloated ADOBE junk:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

[AC0H]

What sort of problems are they having?
I purchased and installed office 2007 and I find it Wonderful.
Of course, I take the time to learm how to use it. Still, I am interested to know what problems they are having.
Are they Software problems or End User problems?

Thanks,
Gordon
Most of the complaints center around functionality that was either dropped or moved by MS. If it takes an experienced (10+years) Office user a month to re-learn the package multiply that times 500 in the pilot. Also, a lot of our in house applications are designed to interface with or just get along with Office. A lot of complaints from the 2007 users about that.

I know talking to the back line help desk guys on occasion that one of the worst things they have to do is un-install 07 and re-install 03. It invariably leads to a re-image and the loss of half a day for the employee production wise.

One of the guys I work with worked for MS writing their books and training people. He says it's the corportae mindset at MS. As good as 2003 is, and it's pretty good, MS can't, for some reason, leave it alone.

On the Wishta front, my company won't be considering it for anything other than a few pilot users for at least 2 years.

[W3MIV]

Most of the complaints center around functionality that was either dropped or moved by MS. If it takes an experienced (10+years) Office user a month to re-learn the package multiply that times 500 in the pilot. Also, a lot of our in house applications are designed to interface with or just get along with Office. A lot of complaints from the 2007 users about that.

I started out with MS Word in 1985 -- version was 1.15 (I still have the original 5.25" floppies, which I saved just for nostalgia -- ugly green labels!). Every change along the way has required a learning curve.

For my money, 2007 is an improvement over 2003, though it does have a radically different interface and demands a bit of learning to adjust to it.

Sounds to me like an employee problem more than a software problem. Fire the lot of them; they are all spoiled brats.

:eek:

[N2RJ]

I use PDFCreator from PDFForge...

It's pretty nice for what it does, and it's free. Just make sure you uncheck the search bar.

At work I have Adobe Acrobat, because we have some sort of bulk license, and we can create fillable forms and all that stuff.

PDF is similar to Postscript anyway, so there should be a lot of free alternatives.

[n2ize]

I started out by writing programs in FORTRAN on punch cards. In later years I had access to a PDP-11 and later a VAXen. My "word processing" in those days was done with an ordinary text editor i.e. TECO, Emacs and formatted using a text formatter called DRS (Digital Standard Runoff).

I still do a lot of my documentation that way using an editor and TeX/LaTeX markup. The latter is particularly useful for mathematical documentation.

[ka7o]

You can convert any document to PDF with a Mac.
Comes with the operating system.
What could be simpler? :D

Well fiddlesicks! If you're going to jump-ship to a new platform, at least choose one that's ham friendly! Linux of course. PDF formats have been 'native' to the Linux world for many years now. OpenOffice, ABIWord and other productivity suites available too. Choice is abundant!

And we've got Xastir,LoTW,gpredict,xlog,hamlib,gpsk32,fldigi,etc ,etc,etc.

ALL FREE! (most ham's favorite price!)

OH - and it doesn't require buying new, expensive hardware to run either. Use what you got and upgrade.

[W4INF]

I downloaded PDFForge and it works GREAT. I also have Adobe for making forms, but PDFForge is great for simple PDFs and it can also print to graphic images!

Thanks for the post about PDFForge!

Andrew