How to create PDF for free

Are you looking for a free program to create PDF files but you don’t know which one to choose? Do you need to edit the content of a PDF but have no intention of contacting Adobe Acrobat? Don’t worry, it’s no longer needed, or at least not necessarily.

Gone are the days when solutions like Adobe’s were the only resource to easily modify documents in the format in question. Now there are many alternative programs and as many online services that allow you to work with this type of file in an extremely simple and, above all, totally freeway. If you want I can recommend some of the most important ones.

Do you want? Yes? Great! You will find everything below: their names, the sites to download them (or use them, in the case of Web services) and links with further information on their operation. In short, if you want to know how to create PDF for free, all you have to do is continue reading and choose the solution that seems to you best suited to your needs.

Index

• Create PDF for free online
  • iLovePDF
  • Google Drive / Microsoft Office Online
• Create PDFs for free offline
  • PDF printer
  • LibreOffice
  • All-in-one solutions

Create PDF for free online

If you want to create PDFs for free without installing any program on your PC, you can resort to online solutions that work directly from the browser (any of the most popular). Therefore you will find below what I believe to be the best Web tools belonging to the category in question. Put them to the test now and you will see that you will not regret it!

iLovePDF

iLovePDF is one of the best Web services dedicated to PDF documents: it allows you to edit, convert and create new ones starting from various types of files. It does not require registration, it is free, it supports the upload of documents up to 200MB and protects the privacy of users by automatically deleting the files that are uploaded to its servers within a few hours.

To use it, connect to its home page and choose, by clicking on the relevant button, one of the many functions available: Merge PDF,  Split PDF,  Compress PDF,  Rotate PDF,  Unlock PDF,  PDF to Word, PDF to Excel  and so on.

Then, click on the button to select the document in the center of the screen and choose the file to be processed from your computer. Alternatively, drag and drop documents directly into the browser window. If the file you want to act on is on Dropbox or Google Drive , you can also upload it directly from there by clicking on the relevant buttons and logging into your account.

Then wait for the upload to finish and apply the desired changes using any on-screen functions. When the operation is completed, to download the final PDFs on your PC, click on the black button at the bottom of the screen.

For example, if you want to transform a PDF file into a Word document, choose the PDF to Word tool, drag the file to act on the program window, wait for it to be processed and click the Convert to Word button at the bottom.

Google Drive / Microsoft Office Online

If you want to draft a PDF document from scratch, that is, from a blank sheet, or you want to edit the content of a PDF file directly from your browser, you can use the Google and Microsoft online productivity suites: Google Drive and Office Online.

Both support PDFs in the input phase (converting them “on the fly” to make them editable) and provide a function to export documents created in PDF format. You can use Google Drive and Office Online on any browser and operating system at no cost, as long as you have a Google account  (if you remember correctly, I explained how to create one in my article on how to create a Google account ) or a Microsoft account ( for more info, refer to my guide on how to create a Microsoft account ) with which to log in.

To edit the content of a PDF in Google Drive, you have to drag it to the browser window after connecting to the home page of the service, wait for the upload to finish, right-click on the preview of the document and select the item Open with> Google Docs from the menu that appears. To Export a document to PDF, on the other hand, just select the Download as> PDF Document item from the File menu.

On Office Online, on the other hand, to change the content of a PDF you need to connect to the home page of the service, click on Upload a document and select the file you want to act on. To export a document to PDF, select the appropriate option Download as PDF attached to the File> Save as menu.

Create PDFs for free offline

As I said at the beginning, it is possible to create PDFs for free also by using some special applications. There are several, all quite simple to use. Here are some of the best you can use on Windows, Mac and Linux.

PDF printer

A great way to create PDF for free is to convert other types of files to this format. And if online you can rely on converters, such as the ones I mentioned at the beginning of the guide, offline you can instead use virtual printers that turn all printable content into PDFs: web pages, photos, documents, etc.

Numerous software of this type are available on Windows, such as doPDF which is free (in its basic version), while on Mac you can take advantage of the “standard” function provided by the operating system for exporting to PDF.

To use doPDF on your PC, download the program from its website by connecting to it and clicking on the Download Now! Button  . twice in a row.

When the download is complete, open the dopdf-full.exe file you just obtained and, in the window that appears on the desktop, remove the check from the box relating to the installation of the add-in for Microsoft Office (which is in the center) ‘send anonymous statistics (located at the bottom right) and click on the Install Now button. Press into on Yes and Close.

At this point, to create your PDF file all you have to do is open it with the program you generally use for that specific type of document (eg Microsoft Word for DOC and DOCX files) and select Print from the File menu.

Then select DoPDF from the list of available printers, click on the Print button, on Browse to indicate the folder for the output file and, finally, press OK.

As for the Mac side, open the reference file using the default application designated for this purpose (eg Textedit for RTF documents) and select the Print … item from the File menu at the top of the screen. In the window that opens, expand the PDF drop-down menu at the bottom left and select the Save as PDF option.

Then type the name you want to assign to the file in the Save as: field, select the folder for the output from the Located in: menu and click Save.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is, according to many, the best free alternative to Microsoft Office. Allows you to create and edit Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations; manages databases, allows you to create printable documents and, last but not least, allows you to both create and edit PDF files. Oh, I almost forgot: it is compatible not only with Windows, but also with Mac and Linux.

To use it, connect to its official website and click on the Download version xxx. Button, in order to download the program on your computer. If you are using a Mac, also click on the Translated User Interface button, in order to download the package to translate the program into Italian (which in the Windows version is attached to the installation file).

When the download is complete, if you are using Windows start the LibreOffice_xx_Win_x86.msi file you just obtained and complete the setup by clicking on Next twice in succession, on  Install, on  Yes  and on  Finish.

If you are using macOS instead, open the LibreOffice_x.x.x_MacOS_x86-64.dmg package obtained, drag the program icon into the Applications folder and select Open twice. After the first start of the program, close it and open the LibreOffice_xx_MacOS_x86-64_langpack_it.dmg package, right-click on the LibreOffice Language Pack executable, select the Open item twice in a row and then Install. Then choose the item / Applications / LibreOffice.app from the window that opens and, to conclude, click again on the Install button.

At this point, go read my tutorials on how to create editable PDFs and how to write on PDFs and you will discover how to fully exploit the potential of this extraordinary open-source software for creating and editing PDF files.

All-in-one solutions

Are you looking for an all-in-one solution for creating, converting and editing PDF documents?

If you use a Windows PC you can rely on PDFill FREE PDF Tools which includes tools to merge and split PDFs, rotate document pages, remove passwords that prevent editing and printing, convert PDFs to images, add watermarks, convert images to PDF and much more. It can also be used free of charge for commercial purposes. You can download it from its website, while to find out how it works you can refer to my tutorials on how to convert PDF to JPEG and how to merge PDF files.

If you use a Mac you can instead turn to Preview, the application for viewing photos and PDFs included “standard” in macOS, or PDF Toolkit + that you can download from the Mac App Store but is not free (costs € 2.29 ). The latter offers many of the features included in PDFill FREE PDF Tools for Windows, such as the ability to merge and split PDFs, convert them to images etc. I told you about both software in my tutorial on how to edit PDF Mac.