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This document provides instructions for Acrobat XI. If you're using Acrobat DC, see Acrobat DC Help.
PDFMaker is an Acrobat feature that operates within many business applications, such as Microsoft Office applications, AutoCAD, and Lotus Notes. When you install Acrobat, PDFMaker controls appear in the work area of the authoring application.
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Some PDFMaker features are not available in certain versions of the authoring applications. For a comparison chart, see Compatible web browsers and PDFMaker applications | Acrobat, Reader.
Using PDFMaker within an authoring application is a simple, one-click procedure. It involves clicking an Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar button or choosing a command on the Adobe PDF menu. It is not necessary to open Acrobat.
In Windows, Acrobat installs both an Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar and an Adobe PDF menu in many popular authoring applications. You can use either the toolbar buttons or the Adobe PDF menu (the Action menu in Lotus Notes) to create PDFs, but the menu also provides access to conversion settings. Although many of the conversion options are common to all authoring applications, a few are application-specific.
For Microsoft Office 2007 and later applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the options for creating PDFs are available from the Acrobat ribbon.
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If you don’t see the PDF toolbar buttons in an application, you must show or activate the PDF toolbar. For other troubleshooting issues, see Troubleshoot Acrobat PDFMaker Problems.
If the PDF toolbar buttons don’t appear in your Microsoft Office or Lotus Notes application, use one of the following methods to show or activate PDFMaker.
For Lotus Notes 8 or later, choose File > Preferences. In the dialog box that appears, choose Toolbar > Toolbars, and select the Visible option for Acrobat PDFMaker.
For Office 2003 or earlier, choose View > Toolbars > Acrobat PDFMaker.
For Office 2007 or Office 2010, follow these steps:
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- (Outlook 2007) Choose Tools > Trust Center.
- (Other Office 2007 applications) Click the Office button, and then click the [Application] Options button, where [Application] is the Office application name. For example, in Word, the button name is Word Options.
- (Office 2010 applications) Click the File tab, and then click Option.
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- To specify only users that receive the PDF, select Restrict Access Only To People In This Message’s To:, Cc:, And Bcc: List. In this case, the PDF isn’t secured until you send the email message.
- To specify only users that are specified by a security policy, select Restrict Access By Applying The Following Security Policy, and then select a security policy in the list. In this case, the PDF is secured before it is attached to the email message.
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Follow the directions in the wizard that appears, as described in Start an email-based review.
PDFMaker conversion settings vary according to file types. For example, the options available for PowerPoint files aren’t the same as the options available for Outlook files. Once you’ve selected conversion settings, those choices apply to all subsequent PDFs you create from that file type. It’s a good idea to review the settings occasionally.
Conversion Settings
Specifies the standard by which the PDF will be optimized. When you choose an item in the menu, a description of that preset appears immediately below it.
View Adobe PDF Result
Opens the converted document directly into Acrobat. (Exception: when you choose Convert To Adobe PDF And Email.)
Prompt For Adobe PDF File Name
Lets you enter a custom filename for the resulting PDF. Deselect this option to save the file in the same folder as the source file, using the same name but with a .pdf extension.
Convert Document Information
Adds document information from the Properties dialog box of the source file. This setting overrides the printer preferences and settings in the Advanced panel of the Adobe PDF Settings dialog box.
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The Advanced Settings button opens the Adobe PDF Settings dialog box, which contains many additional conversion options. These conversion settings apply to all Acrobat features that create PDFs, such as Acrobat Distiller, PDFMaker, and the Acrobat application itself.
PDF/A Compliance
Creates the PDF so that it conforms to the selected ISO standard for long-term preservation of electronic documents.
Require A Password To Open The Document
When selected, makes the Document Open Password option available, where you enter a password that users must use to open the document.
Restrict Editing And Printing Of The Document
When selected, makes the other Permissions options available.
Change Permissions Password
Specifies a password you set that users must use in order to do any allowable printing or editing.
Printing Allowed
Specifies whether users who use the Permissions Password can print the document and at what resolution.
Enable Copying Of Text, Images, And Other Contents
Prevents or allows users from copying from the PDF.
Enable Text Access For Screen Reader Devices For The Visually Impaired
Prevents or allows screen reader devices to read text. (Selected by default.)
Enable Plaintext Metadata
Specifies whether the search engine can read the document metadata. Available only when the PDF-compatibility is set to Acrobat 6.0 (PDF 1.5) or later.
When creating a PDF from Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, you can set conversion options for the current file. You can also select a range of content in the file to convert. The conversion options that you can set in the following steps are some of the most commonly used settings from the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog box. Any changes you make to the conversion options apply to the current conversion only.
In Acrobat Pro, PDFMaker includes an option to embed many types of multimedia files in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files. The files are converted to FLV format files. When you convert the document to PDF, the PDF includes a playable FLV file.
You can use PDFMaker to convert one or more Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes email messages or entire folders of messages to a merged PDF or PDF Portfolio. Within a PDF Portfolio, each email message appears as a separate PDF file.
The Acrobat PDFMaker Conversion Settings dialog box contains the option that determines whether email messages are merged into one continuous PDF or assembled into a PDF Portfolio.
The controls that activate an email conversion to PDF appear in two places within the email application: on the Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar and on a menu. In Outlook, the menu is called Adobe PDF and appears to the right of the Outlook Help menu. In Lotus Notes, PDF commands appear under the Actions menu.
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You can convert one currently open email message to PDF (not to a PDF Portfolio) by choosing File > Print, and selecting Adobe PDF as the printer in the Print dialog box. The PDFMaker conversion settings do not affect this process.
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You can also convert a different file to PDF from within an open Outlook email message if the Attach As Adobe PDF toolbar is shown. Clicking this button opens a series of dialog boxes for selecting and saving the new PDF and also starts Acrobat, if it is not already running. The resulting PDF is attached to the open email message.
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- (Outlook) Choose Adobe PDF > Convert Selected Messages > Append To Existing PDF, or Adobe PDF > Convert Selected Folders > Append To Existing PDF.
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If you have already created one or more PDF Portfolios, you can choose from recently created PDF Portfolios in addition to the Append To Existing PDF option.
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(Outlook only) If a message appears, alerting you that the existing PDF was created using an earlier version of PDFMaker, do one of the following:
- To create a PDF Portfolio from the original PDF archive, click Yes, and select a name and location for the new archive. (The default name adds _Portfolio to the original PDF filename.) When the conversion is complete and the Creating Adobe PDF dialog box closes, the new archive opens in Acrobat.
- Click No to cancel the process.
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For PDF Portfolios of email converted or migrated in Acrobat 8 or later, only new messages—that is, messages that are not already part of the PDF Portfolio—are appended.
PDFMaker can convert multiple folders to PDF in one procedure. It is not necessary to select the folders at the beginning of the process because you can select them in a dialog box that appears automatically.
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Review the settings and the archive folder names listed in the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog box, and do any of the following:
- To add other email folders to the list, click Add and select the folder.
- To remove folders from the list, select the folders and click Delete.
- To change an archive file, select any folder name from the list, click Change Archive File, and specify the name and location.
- To start archiving email immediately, click Run Archival Now.
Mail merges from Word generate documents like form letters—for one common example—that are personalized with information like the names and addresses of the recipients. With Acrobat PDFMaker, you can save steps by using a Word mail merge document and corresponding data file to output mail merges directly to PDF. You can even set up PDFMaker to attach those PDFs to email messages that are generated during the PDF-creation process.
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For information on setting up files for the Word Mail Merge feature, see Microsoft Office Word Help.
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In Microsoft Word, open the template that you have created as the basis of your mail merge, or create the file using the Word Mail Merge toolbar and Mail Merge wizard, as needed.
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Do not complete the mail merge in Word. Instead, set up and preview the mail merge as usual, so that you can verify that the merge will work correctly.
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- To specify which records in the data file will be imported into the merged files, select All or Current, or enter a range of pages by typing in the From and To boxes.
- To name the PDF that will be created, type in the Specify PDF File Name box.
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The PDF will be named using this text plus a series of numbers. For example, if you type JulyLetter in the Specify PDF File Name box, the mail-merged PDFs might appear as JulyLetter_0000123, JulyLetter_0000124, JulyLetter_0000125, and so forth.
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Use the pop-up menu to select the field or column in the associated data file that contains the email addresses in each individual’s record.
There are specific differences to be aware of when you create PDFs from files authored in Microsoft Project.
You can create PDFs of only the current selected view. Views designated as non-printable in Project cannot be converted to PDF.
PDFs created from Visio files preserve page sizes and support layers, searchable text, custom properties, links, bookmarks, and comments, depending on the conversion settings. To specify the properties
(Visio 2007 or 2003) Choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings to review these settings, if needed.
(Visio 2010) From the ribbon choose Acrobat > Preferences
When you convert your Visio file, only shapes and guides that are printable and visible in the Visio drawing are converted and appear in the PDF. Shapes are converted regardless of their protection or behavior. Shape custom properties can be converted to PDF object data.
When you convert the Visio file to a PDF, you can preserve all or just some layers, or you can flatten all layers. If you flatten layers, the PDF will look like the original drawing, but won’t contain any layer information. When flattened, the contents of only visible and printable layers will appear in the converted PDF.
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- (Visio 2007 or 2003) Click the Convert To Adobe PDF button in the Adobe PDF toolbar.
- (Visio 2007 or 2003) Choose Adobe PDF > Convert To Adobe PDF.
- (Visio 2007 or 2003) Choose Adobe PDF > Convert To Adobe PDF And Email. The PDF file attaches to a new email message in your default email application.
- (Visio 2007 or 2003)Choose Adobe PDF > Convert To Adobe PDFAnd Send For Review. The file converts to an Adobe PDF file, and an email-based review process begins.
- (Visio 2010) Choose Acrobat > Create PDF.
- (Visio 2010) Choose Acrobat > Convert To Adobe PDF.
- (Visio 2010) Choose Acrobat > Create and Attach To Email. The PDF file attaches to a new email message in your default email application.
- (Visio 2010) Choose Acrobat > Create and Send For Review. The file converts to an Adobe PDF file, and an email-based review process begins.
You can convert a Visio drawing that contains layers to a PDF and retain some or all of the layers in the resulting PDF, or you can flatten the layers. You can also organize the Visio layers in layer sets, which are folders in the Acrobat Layers panel.
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To add the selected Visio layers to the list of layers to convert to the PDF file, do one of the following:
- To convert the selected Visio layers to individual PDF layers within a PDF layer set, click Create Layer Set, and optionally, type a layer name.
- To convert the selected Visio layers to individual layers (but not grouped under a layer set), click the Add Layer(s) button.
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The name of a layer in the Layers In Visio Drawing list is unavailable if that layer is included in the Layers In PDF list. When you select that layer in the Layers In PDF list, a bullet appears next to the layer’s name in the Layers In Visio Drawing list.
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- To reorder the layers in the Layers In PDF list, drag an item up or down in the list.
- To include a visibility property that can be switched on or off in Acrobat, deselect Locked On adjacent to the PDF layer; to lock the resulting PDF layer’s visibility on, select Locked On.
- To save the current settings of Visio layers selected, click Save PDF Settings, and click OK. These settings are used the next time you convert the current Visio file to a PDF file.
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Click Convert To PDF, specify a folder in the Save In box in which to save the PDF file, type a filename, and then click Save.
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Visio layers that were selected for conversion and that have Visio settings for visible, printable, or lock are converted to PDF layers; the visible and printable properties are included in the resulting PDF layers. If the Visio file contains a background page, header, or footer, the PDF file automatically has PDF layers named for those items.
Use PDFMaker to convert AutoCAD files from within the AutoCAD application. You can also use the Batch Conversion feature to convert many AutoCAD files in one operation. Even if you don’t have AutoCAD, you can convert AutoCAD files to PDF from Acrobat.
Acrobat PDFMaker allows you to preserve selected layers and layouts when converting AutoCAD files to PDF.
The default Acrobat installation installs Autodesk filters. These filters allow you to convert files in DWG, DWF, DST, DWT, and DXF format into PDF, without the native application installed.
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(Optional) From the Files Of Type menu, select Autodesk AutoCAD, then click the Settings button and change the conversion settings as needed. The settings are the same as the AutoCAD-specific Acrobat PDFMaker settings, with the following additions:
Convert Model Space To 3D
When selected, the model space layout is converted to a 3D annotation in the PDF. Click Choose 3D Settings to specify 3D conversion options.
When converting individual AutoCAD files, you don't usually need to change page size and plotting settings. PDFMaker uses the appropriate layout page size and plotting information to create a correctly sized PDF file.
If you choose to retain all or some AutoCAD layers when converting to PDF, you can specify which layers are preserved in the PDF.
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- Choose an option from the Named Layer Filters menu to list all layers that fit that criterion.
- Select the Invert option to list all layers except those layers that are described by the selected choice in the Named Layer Filters menu.
- To change the sort order of the layers, click the headings.
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To change the On, Frozen, or Plot properties for a layer, click Cancel, change the properties in the AutoCAD drawing, and restart the procedure.
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- To reorder layers, drag an item up or down in the list.
- To include a visibility property that can be switched on or off in Acrobat, deselect Locked On for the PDF layer. To lock the resulting PDF layer’s visibility on, select Locked On.
- To save the current list of selected AutoCAD layers, click Add PDF Setting. Later, you can retrieve this list from the PDF Layer Settings menu.
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- Click Add Folder or Add Files, and then specify the folder or files.
- To load a previously saved list of files, click Append List, and then specify the list.
- As needed, expand individual files and select or deselect the items you want, such as model space and layouts. To exclude or include all model space, click the associated buttons.
- To exclude a file from the conversion, deselect the file box. As needed, select or deselect all of the files in the list, change the order of the files, remove files, or clear the list.
- To show the complete file paths, select Expand File Name(s).
- To save the DWG list for later use, click Save List. This action saves the list in its current state, including the file order and file selections. You can retrieve this list at any time by clicking Append List.
Sometimes the conversion settings in one PDFMaker-enabled application are different from the settings in a different application.
Some PDFMaker settings are common to several or most applications. Some options are unique to a specific application.
The following settings appear on the Settings tab available from within most PDFMaker-enabled applications.
Create Bookmarks
Converts certain elements in original Office documents to PDF bookmarks: Word headings, Excel worksheet names, or PowerPoint titles. Selecting this option overrides any settings on the Bookmarks tab of the Conversion Settings dialog box.
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If this option is deselected, but the recipient of the PDF has the create Links From URLs preference selected, URLs in the PDF are still active.
Convert Comments
Converts user-created Excel comments to notes and lists them in the Acrobat Comments panel.
Fit Worksheet To A Single Page
Adjusts the size of each worksheet so that all the entries on that worksheet appear on the same page of the PDF.
Fit To Paper Width
Adjusts the width of each worksheet so that all the columns on that worksheet appear on one page in the PDF.
Prompt For Selecting Excel Sheets
Opens a dialog box at the beginning of the file conversion process. In this dialog box, you can specify which worksheets are included in the PDF and the order in which the sheets appear in the PDF.
Preserve Animation (PowerPoint 2003 only)
Converts any animation effects in the PowerPoint file to equivalent animations in the PDF. This option is not available in PowerPoint 2007 or later.
Convert Hidden Slides To PDF Pages
Converts any PowerPoint slides that are not seen in the usual playing of the presentation to PDF pages.
Convert Speaker Notes
Converts any speaker notes for the PowerPoint presentation into Text notes in the PDF.
Use PowerPoint Printer Settings (PowerPoint 2003 only)
Uses the same printer settings in the PDF as in the original file. This option is not available in PowerPoint 2007 or later.
The following options appear when you open the PDFMaker settings from within Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes.
Compatibility
Sets the compatibility level of the PDF. Use the most recent version (in this case, version 1.7 ADBE-3) to include all the latest features and functionality. If you’re creating PDFs that are distributed widely, choose an earlier level to ensure that all users can view and print the document.
Output Adobe PDF Portfolio When Creating A New PDF File
When selected, always converts individual messages as component files of a PDF Portfolio. When deselected, merges individual messages as separate pages of a PDF.
Embed Index For Faster Search
Creates an embedded index, which speeds up searches, especially when you convert large numbers of email messages or message folders.
Block Download Of External Content
When selected, prevents the downloading of any external Internet content, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.
Page Layout options
Specifies page properties, like the properties found in the Print dialog box: page dimensions, orientation, and margins.
Show This Number Of Recent Archives (Outlook only)
When converting email messages and folders, the Adobe PDF > [Convert Selected Messages and Convert Selected Folders] menus can list recently created PDFs to append. This option specifies the maximum number of PDFs to list in the menus.
Show “Attach As Adobe PDF” Buttons
If selected, the Attach As Adobe PDF button appears in the Outlook email message window.
Embed Scale Information
Preserves drawing-scale information, which is usable with the Acrobat measurement tools.
Do Not Convert Model Space To 3D
When selected, the model space layout is not converted to a 3D annotation in the PDF.
Choose Layout Option
Specifies whether Current Layout, All Layouts, or Selected Layouts are included in the PDF.
Exclude Model Space
(Available only when Convert All Layouts Without Prompting is selected from Choose Layout Option.) When selected, all layouts except the model space are included in the PDF.
Choose Layer Option
Specifies whether All Layers, Selected Layers, or No Layers are included as layers in the PDF.
Include Visio Custom Properties As Object Data In The Adobe PDF
Indicates whether custom properties of the Visio image are included as object data in the new PDF.
Exclude Visio Objects With No Custom Properties
Indicates whether the new PDF excludes Visio objects without custom properties.
Convert Comments To Adobe PDF Comments
Indicates whether the comments in the Visio file are converted to PDF comments in the new PDF.
Always Flatten Layers In Adobe PDF
Specifies if the layers are flattened. If you flatten layers, the PDF looks like the original drawing, but doesn’t contain any layer information. All shapes in the Visio drawing are converted, regardless of their protection or behavior, and shape custom properties can be converted to PDF object data.
Convert Displayed Comments To Notes In Adobe PDF
Changes any Word comment entries to PDF comments. If the currently open Word document contains comments, more options appear in the Comments list on this tab:
Convert Cross-References And Table Of Contents To Links
(Word 2002 and 2003) Enables one-click navigation of these elements in the new PDF. This option is not available in Word 2007.
The options you specify on this tab determine which items are converted into PDF bookmarks in the PDF.
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To include bookmarks in the conversion process, you must select the Add Bookmarks To Adobe PDF option on the Settings tab. If you deselect that option, you override any options you select on this tab, and no bookmarks are created.
Convert Word Headings To Bookmarks
Selects all the headings in the Elements list for conversion to PDF bookmarks.
Convert Word Styles To Bookmarks
Selects all the text styles in the Elements list for conversion to PDF bookmarks (deselected by default).
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When some but not all of the available Word headings and styles are selected for conversion to PDF bookmarks, the marker in the corresponding check boxes at the top of the tab change. If all elements of the type are selected, a check mark appears. If only some of the elements of that type are selected, a colored square appears. Otherwise, the check box is empty.