How to Make a PDF File

The overwhelming advantage of PDF documents is that they are accessible by anyone with the free Adobe Reader program and they faithfully reproduce the appearance of the original document on which they are based.

There are several ways to create Adobe's Protable Document Files.  Remember that PDF is a file format intended for displaying content that has been created in another program.  Since most non-graphics content is created with Microsoft Office, the method for creating a PDF document is as simple as clicking on the File tab (in Office 2010), selecting Save & Send, and then selecting Create PDF/XPS Document.  Don't worry about the XPS format.  It is a format created by Microsoft to compete with PDF, but is little used.  Here is an illustration of the procedure:

If you do not have Office 2010, visit our Microsoft software page to download an add-in that will permit you to save in PDF format.

Other programs, especially graphics programs do not have this convenient Save As... feature built-in.  When this is the case, you need a program that will process the files produced by these other programs into a PDF file.  If you have a Palomar College workstation, then it undoubtedly has a version of Acrobat installed on it.  You can use the Acrobat program to open documents (including graphics files like JPG, GIF, PNG or TIFF format files) created in other programs and save them as PDF files.  In fact, various documents from disparate sources can be combined into a single PDF portfolio, but that's another topic.

Another benefit of installing the full Acrobat program--not the free Acrobat Reader, but the for-pay Acrobat program--is that it installs the PDF printer driver as one of your system printers.  Therefore, from any program you can print to the PDF printer to create a PDF file.

If you do not have access to the full Acrobat program, however, there are good free alternatives.  We recommend the free BullZip printer, a freeware program that installs the BullZip printer that acts like the PDF printer driver described above.

We recommend that faculty members use PDF format for the documents they upload and link in Blackboard (and elsewhere on the web) because they are readable by virtually anyone anywhere with the free Adobe Reader software, which is installed on almost all computer systems.