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How do I print to a PDF file in Mac OS X?

A friend told me that on the Mac anything that I could send to a printer could also be easily saved as a PDF file on my computer, to examine or even print later. I have no clue how to do that, but it'd sure be useful. How do you print to a PDF on a Mac?


Dave's Answer:

This is a common question and highlights a feature of Mac OS X that's well worth knowing, a feature that in my eyes, at least, is one of the best capabilities of the Mac system. After all, without the print-to-pdf feature, you'd end up having to use a commercial PDF rendering application like Adobe Acrobat, which is pretty expensive and would significantly impact your capabilities too.

Fortunately, it's pretty darn easy to print to a PDF with just what's built in to Leopard or Panther (different versions of Mac OS X).

For example, I'll convert a Web page into a PDF file by opening up the page in Safari, then choosing File --> Print.... This brings up the following dialog window:

Print to a PDF file?  You bet!

Notice the button labelled "PDF" on the lower left. That's the target, so click it. Now you'll see this:

Print to a PDF file?  You bet!

As you can see, there are quite a few choices in terms of how the printer program formats and renders the page you seek to print, but I always just choose Save As PDF.... Now you'll get yet another dialog box:

Print to a PDF file?  You bet!

You can probably leave this all untouched, but I would suggest you rename the "save as" to have a name that you find mnemonic, not algorithmically scraped from another page. :-)

Once you've done that, click on "Save" and a few seconds later you'll have a PDF file that is the rendering of the page or document you were viewing!



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Comments

I agree Dave, this feature is well worth the software price!! I have used this feature for a very long time and don't think I could live without it. So many things I do rely on PDF's and to simply print as a pdf works excellent! I used to export as PDF files but depending on what you were exporting, it wouldn't always work. This works flawlessly.

Also, I noticed my wife had a PDF file she printed from Acrobat Reader (on both Mac and PC) and all photos print in red. I open the pdf in preview and it prints perfect. That's a mac for you!

Posted by: Jerid Hill at January 9, 2008 11:03 AM

Another, even easier way to do this is to install SafariStand http://hetima.com/safari/stand-e.html - which then enables a right-click menu item in Safari entitled Export to PDF...

Posted by: Wes Miller at January 18, 2008 9:47 AM

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Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

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