Create a PDF

Creating a PDF with PDFCreator couldn’t be easier. Just follow the steps below and you will be creating PDFs in no time. There are four ways to create a PDF in PDFCreator: Printing, Drag and Drop, Command Line and via Windows Explorer.

Method 1: Printing

  1. Open the document you wish to convert into the PDF format in a compatible application.

  2. Print the document as you would on a regular printer. When the print dialog appears, change the printer from your default printer to the PDFCreator printer. If the PDFCreator printer is your default printer, you do not have to change it. Then start printing.

  3. The PDFCreator window will appear, asking you to fill in some information regarding the creation of your PDF. Click on the Save button to pick the location where you would like to save the PDF.

    Note

    This is also the location where you can specify which format you would like to save the document in. You can save in PDF, PNG, JPEG or TIFF format.

  4. If you selected Save, your PDF will be created and opened up in your default PDF viewer. If you have PDF Architect installed, you can choose to have it automatically open the created PDFs for editing.

Method 2: Windows Explorer

  1. Right click on any document and select Create PDF with PDFCreator.

  2. If PDFCreator is not your default printer, it might ask to become it temporarily in order to complete the request. It will return the default printer status to the original printer once the process has been completed.

  3. Proceed with step 4 of method 1.

Method 3: Drag and Drop

  1. Take a printable file and drop it on the PDFCreator program link on an active PDFCreator window.

  2. Proceed with step 2 of method 2.

Hint

With Drag & Drop you can simply add PDF files without printing. For example to Merge two documents.

Method 4: Command Line

  1. Go to the Start menu and click on Run.

  2. In the Open box type: PDFCreator.exe /PrintFile=”Path of file to be converted” (Make sure to type the full path to PDFCreator.exe). You can also use this command in a shortcut, batch file or in the command prompt (CMD.exe).

  3. If PDFCreator is not your default printer, it might ask to become it temporarily in order to complete the request. It will return the default printer status to the original printer once the process has been completed.

  4. The document’s default application will open up and automatically print the document and exit. Then PDFCreator will open up a window and ask you to fill in some information regarding the creation of your PDF. Click on the Save button to pick the location where you would like to save the PDF or click the Waiting button to create the PDF at a later time.

    Note

    This is also the location where you can specify which format you would like to save the document in. You can save in PDF, PNG, JPEG or TIFF format.

  5. If you selected Save, your PDF will be created and opened up in your default PDF viewer.