PDF stands for Portable Data Format and it is a file format for files which are platform independent. This format is widely used by all to share data regardless of what it is. It could be spreadsheet, or a text document, or a picture whatever you can think to put on a paper can be bundled in a pdf file which can later be viewed by anybody using a pdf viewer. PDF is a file format designed and developed by Adobe and they also have created feature rich software to edit and create PDF files. PDF files which most of the people read are in read only format and no editing can be done in them. There are many ways to create PDF files and off course the first method is to use Adobe PDF Writer. But unfortunately Adobe PDF writer is quite expensive and if you are not actually in a task of creating PDFs then purchasing this software doesn’t seems to be logical. There are other ways of creating PDF files and Microsoft has given the simplest solution for this along with the release of its new Office 2010 suit.
Microsoft has encoded the PDF format in Office Word 2010 and a PDF file can now be created and edited just like any other word document file. To create a PDF file in Office Word 2010 first you need to create a new file. Once you have a blank unsaved document either you can put the text first and save it as PDF or you can save it first as PDF and later keep on appending the changes to it. Whatever you wish the way to save a file as PDF remains the same. Click on File and then click on Save As. In the Save As box give a name to your file and then under the file name box you will find a drop down for File Types. Drop this down and selected PDF from the list of choices. Click on Save and that would be all. Your PDF file will get created and will also remain open for further editing. It definitely is a good move by Microsoft, but it is hard to understand why this incorporation was done. Microsoft itself has a PDF like format called as the XPS document. This was launched along with Windows Vista but did not gain popularity because of the dominance of PDF files. Now instead of making people XPS dependent why is Microsoft helping in increasing and simplifying the usage of ODF files remains a question, but whatever the answer may be the fact is that users will now be able to create PDF files very easily.
If you do not want to spend money on Microsoft Office 2010 for creating the PDF files then you can search the internet for PDF Printers. These small applications gets installed as printers and when you print any document using them they create a PDF file of your document just like the XPS Document Writer an XPS file. These printers are for free and really handy and useful. Give them a try.
