How to create PDF

Documents in PDF format are becoming more and more popular. In fact they are the first choice when it comes to distributing a document in electronic format, yet there are still many people who do not know how to create them. You, for example, at this moment would need to create PDFs starting from some documents you have created in Word or from some Web pages you have visited, but unfortunately you do not know how to do it.

Well, do you know what it is? That the time has come to remedy! Take five minutes of free time and find out which are the best solutions that allow you to create PDF documents using Windows, macOS, Linux even portable devices equipped with Android or iOS / iPadOS. Believe me, you just have to be spoiled for choice and – equally interesting – you can do everything at no cost, in fact most of the solutions I am about to recommend are free!

So, what are you doing still standing there? Roll up your sleeves and immediately try to create PDF documents from printable content, text documents and other files that you have on your PC or that you can download from the Internet. I bet you will be amazed by the simplicity with which you will be able to do everything and by the quality of the documents you will be able to obtain!

Index

• PDF printers
  • Windows 10 PDF printer
  • DoPDF (Windows)
  • MacOS PDF printer
  • Android PDF printer
  • IOS / iPadOS PDF printer
• Programs to create PDF
  • LibreOffice (Windows / macOS / Linux)
  • Wondershare PDFelement (Windows / macOS)
  • Microsoft Office (Windows / macOS)
  • PDFill FREE PDF Tools (Windows)
  • Preview (macOS)
  • Google Drive (Online)
  • App for smartphones and tablets
• How to create editable PDF
• How to create fillable PDF
• How to create PDF online
• How to create PDF with photos
• How to create unique PDF

PDF printers

There is no doubt: the simplest and most immediate method to create documents in PDF format is to install a virtual printer on the computer, then feeding it all the files that you want to export in this format.

In case you’ve never heard of them, virtual printers work just like real printers. This means that they can be called up in any application, such as Word, Excel or Chrome and can “print”, ie export, in PDF format all the printable contents, whether they are text documents, photos, web pages or other. Many recent operating systems include “standard” PDF virtual printers, but they can also be installed separately if desired. Read on to learn more.

Windows 10 PDF printer

Windows 10 includes “standard” a PDF printer that can be called from any application, even those not produced directly by Microsoft. Its name is Microsoft Print to PDF and its operation is of a disarming simplicity.

To create PDFs with the Windows 10 virtual printer, open any type of printable documents, such as a web page in Chrome, a text document in Notepad, or a photo in the Windows photo viewer and invoke the print command from the File menu (which in some programs is hidden under buttons such as…, ⋮ or ☰).

In the window that opens, select Microsoft Print to PDF or Save as PDF as printer and start the print process by clicking on the appropriate button. Then select the destination folder of your PDF and that’s it.

DoPDF (Windows)

If you are using a version of Windows older than 10, you can rely on DoPDF which is one of the best PDF printers available for free. To download it on your PC, connect to its official website and click on the Download DoPDF Free button.

When the download is complete, open the DoPDF installation package (eg dopdf-full.exe ), remove the checkmark from the item Install add-in for Microsoft Office (it is an extra function that you do not need) and click first on Install now and then on Yes and Launch and visit the site to complete the setup.

At this point, all you have to do is open the file to be transformed into PDF (eg a Word document or a Web page) and call up the print command from the File menu of the program you are using. In the window that opens, select DoPDF from the list of available printers and press the Print button.

Then click on the Browse button, select the path to save the PDF and press OK to start creating the document. If you want, you can also adjust the quality of the output file by selecting one of the options available under PDF Options.

MacOS PDF printer

If you use a Mac, you can get excellent quality PDFs using the virtual printer included “standard” in macOS. Therefore you won’t need any additional software and you can create a PDF document in seconds!

All you have to do is open the document to be transformed into PDF, invoke the print command from the File menu and select the Save as PDF item from the PDF drop-down menu located at the bottom left of the window that opens. Easier than that?

Android PDF printer

As I already mentioned, it is also possible to create PDFs from smartphones and tablets. For example, if you have an Android terminal, you can turn any printable content into PDF by calling the print command from the share menu.

Going into more detail, what you need to do is view a printable document on the smartphone screen (e.g. a Chrome web page, a photo or other), press the share button or select the Share item from the menu of the app you are using. and invoke the print command from the window that opens.

Next, choose Save as PDF or Save as PDF from the menu for choosing printers, press the PDF button and select the folder on your smartphone or tablet where you want to save the PDF.

IOS / iPadOS PDF printer

Even iPhone and iPad offer a virtual printer to convert to PDF any printable content. To use it, view the content you want to convert to PDF on the smartphone or tablet screen (eg a web page in Safari or a message in Mail) and press the share icon.

In the box that opens, select the Print icon and zoom with two fingers on the thumbnail of the content to be printed. Then press again on the sharing icon and choose which app you want to save your document in PDF format (eg. ICloud Drive, Google Drive or Dropbox ).

Programs to create PDF

Do you want to create a PDF from scratch? Then you need word processing software, a printable document creation program and/or a spreadsheet program that has PDF support. Now I’ll point out some that should be right for you.

LibreOffice (Windows / macOS / Linux)

If you want to create documents, spreadsheets, brochures or presentations to be transformed into PDF, you can only rely on LibreOffice. In case you’ve never heard of it, LibreOffice is a free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, which includes everything you need to work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. files. without excessive compatibility problems. It also includes many advanced features, such as exporting and editing PDF documents. It is also compatible with all major operating systems: Windows, macOS and Linux.

To download LibreOffice on your computer, connect to its official website and click on the Download button. If you are using a Mac, also click on the Translated User Interface button which is used to download the Italian translation package for the software (included instead “standard” in the installation of the Windows version).

When the download is finished, if you are using Windows, open the LibreOffice .msi installation package and complete the setup by clicking on Next (two consecutive times), Install, Yes and Finish.

If you are using a Mac, open the .dmg package you downloaded earlier and copy the LibreOffice icon to the folder instead macOS Applications. Then start LibreOffice by right-clicking on its icon and selecting the Open item from the menu that appears (in order to bypass the macOS restrictions regarding applications from developers not certified by Apple) and close the program again by pressing cmd + q .

After this step too, open the dmg package with the Italian translation of LibreOffice, right-click on the LibreOffice Language Pack file, select the Open item from the context menu and first click on the Install button twice consecutively, then on Yes, identify me and type the password of your user account on macOS to install the language pack.

Now you just have to start LibreOffice, click on the button to create a new document of the type you prefer (eg. Document Writer to write a text document) and go to the File menu > Export as> Export to PDF format to save the final result in the form of a PDF file.

If you need information on how to edit existing PDF files with LibreOffice, check out my tutorial on how write to a PDF where everything is explained in detail.

Wondershare PDFelement (Windows / macOS)

If you are looking for a complete, flexible yet easy-to-use PDF creator, I recommend you take a look at the creator program Wondershare PDFelement which really includes everything you need to work on PDF files.

Create PDFs from images, HTML files, Office documents and other types of documents; turns PDFs into editable Word files or other Office files; unites them; allows you to process them in bulk to extract data/pages and other operations; allows you to edit text and images in PDFs, add elements such as highlights, shapes and arrows to them, and much more. The program is available for both Windows and macOS, is fully translated into Italian and can be downloaded for free.

To get it, connected to its official website and click on the download button that you find inside. When the download is complete, if you are using a Windows PC, start the .exe file obtained, click on the Yes and Install buttons, wait for all the files necessary for the software to work to be downloaded from the Internet and complete the setup by clicking on Start now.

If you are using a Mac, on the other hand, open the .dmg file you obtained, click on the Accept button and drag the Wondershare PDFelement icon into the MacOS Applications folder. That’s all!

Now, to create your PDFs with Wondershare PDFelement, start the program and click on the Create PDF box : you will be able to choose an image, an HTML file, an Office document or another file and the program will automatically transform it into an editable PDF. . In the case of images obtained from scanners, it is possible to take advantage of OCR technology to transform scanned texts into editable texts.

Now you just have to select the Wondershare PDFelement tools to make the desired changes to your PDF: in the Tools tab you will find the tools to select/edit texts and images already contained in the document, create PDFs from various types of files, acquire documents from the scanner, take snapshots of the open document etc .; on the View tab there are all the options relating to the display of the PDF; in the Convert tab you will find the tools to process texts with OCR technology, optimize the size of the PDF and transform it into a Word, Excel, PPT file, an image or a simple text file.

In the Edit tab there are then the tools to add images, texts, links, backgrounds and other contents to the document; in Annotation, arrows, shapes, highlighters and other annotation tools; in Pages the tools to extract, insert, divide, replace and rotate the pages of the document; in Modules the tools to create fillable forms (to be exported to PDF or Word); in Security, there are functions to add signatures and passwords to documents.

Once you have made all the changes you want in the document (just select a tool from the top bar, customize its properties using the commands that appear on the right and operate directly on the content of the file), you can export it by going to the File menu, top left and selecting the item Save as (to save it in PDF) or the item Export to (to save it in Word format) from the next screen.

Please note that the free version of Wondershare PDFelement imprints a watermark on the generated documents. It also allows you to convert up to two pages of each PDF and to batch extract data from up to two documents at a time. To remove these limitations it is necessary to purchase the full version of the software, with prices starting from 69 euros/year or 79 euros a month. More info here.

Finally, I remind you that there is also a mobile version of Wondershare PDFelement, compatible with both Android and iOS / iPadOS, ideal for creating and editing PDFs even on the move: take a look and you won’t regret it.

Microsoft Office (Windows / macOS)

If you want to know how to create PDF from Word, you should know that starting from the 2007 version Microsoft Office allows you to export any type of document as a PDF file. To take advantage of this function, all you have to do is open the document you want to transform into PDF in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or another program of the suite, press the File button located at the top left and select the items Export> Create PDF / XPS document> Create PDF / XPS.

If you use a Mac, you must select the Save As item from the File menu at the top and you must select the PDF option from the File Format drop-down menu in the window that opens. That’s all! And if you want to know how to create editable PDF with Word, I recommend reading this tutorial of mine.

PDFill FREE PDF Tools (Windows)

Do you have a series of images in JPG, PNG or BMP format and would like to turn it into a PDF document? You can use the free PDFill FREE PDF Tools for Windows which, as the name suggests, includes a range view of tools for creating, editing and converting PDFs.

To download PDFill FREE PDF Tools on your computer, connect to the official website of the program and click on the Download now button twice in a row. When the download is complete, open the program installation package ( PDFill_PDF_Tools_FREE.exe ) and click first on Yes and then on Next.

Now, put the checkmark next to I accept the terms in the License Agreement and click in sequence on Next (three consecutive times), Install and Finish to complete the setup. Uncheck the items related to other PDFill software to avoid installing them on your computer (they are not dangerous software, but they are not needed for what you have to do).

You may be asked to also install Ghost Script and .Net Framework: accept, these are two free software necessary for the operation of PDFill FREE PDF Tools and not promotional content.

At the end of the installation, launch PDFill FREE PDF Tools and choose the Convert images to PDF function from the main menu of the application. Then drag in the window that opens the images you want to transform into PDF, move them in the order you prefer using the buttons Move up (move up) and Move down (move down) and click on the button Save as to complete the operation.

For more information on how PDFill FREE PDF Tools and other similar software work, read my tutorial on how to transform JPEG to PDF.

Preview (macOS)

On Mac, you can convert a series of images or PDF documents into unique PDFs using Preview, one of the applications included “standard” in macOS. The procedure to follow is really simple: open the first image you want to be part of the PDF, then go to the menu View> Thumbnails and drag the other images into the program’s sidebar.

When the operation is complete, click on any of the thumbnails, then select them all by pressing the combination of keys cmd + a and invoke the print function from the File menu. Expand the PDF drop-down menu at the bottom left of the window that opens and select the Save as PDF item to get your document.

Google Drive (Online)

Google Drive is Google‘s cloud storage service and, by connecting to its official website, you can access a real free productivity suite that allows you to create and edit text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It also supports viewing and exporting files to PDF, so I recommend that you highly consider it.

To export a Google Drive document to PDF, all you have to do is go to the File> Download menu located at the top left and select the PDF Document item from the latter.

App for smartphones and tablets

In conclusion, let me recommend some apps to create and edit PDF documents on the go. There is something for all tastes and budgets.

• Pages– Apple’s word processing application, now free on both Mac and iOS. It allows you to export any file to PDF simply by pressing the (…) button, selecting the Send a copy item from the menu that opens and press the PDF icon.
• Xodo PDF– an editor for PDF documents available on Android and iPhone and iPad that allows you to edit for free all the documents that are fed to you by adding custom texts, highlights, and so on.
• Notability– one of the best applications for creating annotations on PDF files and writing documents of this type from scratch. Only for iPad and iPhone, it costs 9.99 euros.
• AndrOpen Office– an almost perfect port of OpenOffice (the productivity suite from which LibreOffice was born) for Android terminals. It’s free.
• Foxit Mobile PDF– another PDF file viewer that allows you to edit documents with text, notes and more. It is available for free for Android and iOS / iPadOS.

How to create editable PDF

Have you created a PDF file and now you want to know how to edit it? In this case, you should know that there are some tools to convert the document back to its original file or you can directly edit the PDF to add, remove or simply modify its content.

So if you want to know how to create editable PDF, my advice is to consult all the solutions that I have provided you in my tutorial on the subject.

How to create fillable PDF

If you intend to create a PDF form that may have fillable boxes, you must know that all this is possible, thanks to some tools suitable for this purpose.

For this reason, I recommend that you read my guide on how to create fillable PDF, where you will surely find all the information and tips you need!

How to create PDF online

If you do not want in any way to proceed with the installation of a software or application to create your documents in PDF format, you can also rely on some tools that allow you to create PDFs online in a simple and immediate way.

Of course, you must first always make sure that an online PDF creation tool fully respects your privacy! In any case, you can refer to my tutorial on how to edit PDF online, so as to find the solutions that best suit you.

How to create PDF with photos

You want to create PDF with photos without having to go through complex procedures? If so, know that you can easily do this thanks to the use of programs, apps or online tools that allow you to add images to your PDF documents.

If you want to know more about this topic, my advice is to carefully read all the tips I gave you in my guide on how to create PDF from images.

How to create unique PDF

If you have multiple files in PDF format and want to combine them together, your only solution is to use special tools designed for this purpose.

There are several PC software and even apps for smartphones and tablets, which can help you in this feat. You can also use online tools that can make this task even easier for you. To know more, you can refer to my tutorial on how to merge PDF files.