For a home PC, how can one install the Adobe PDF printer option to print to directly to a pdf? Is it a feature of Adobe Reader, or must I purchase some upgrade of Adobe? If it is not free, is there a free option for something similar - to print directly into a Word file, perhaps?
If you use Chrome, it’s already included as the “Save to PDF” option when you try to print a page.
Otherwise you can use something like CutePDF to print to PDF for free:
http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp
Don’t try to print to a Word file. Very few websites, readers, and users support that. PDF is the standard for this.
What operating system are you using? Mac OS X has this as a standard feature of the print dialogue.
It is not a feature of Adobe Reader, but is a feature of Adobe Acrobat, which is not free.
To make things confusing, Adobe changed the name of Adobe Reader (back) to Adobe Acrobat Reader with the recent release of Reader DC.
Another vote for CutePDF. I’ve been using it for years, with never a problem.
(Word also has “save as” pdf as an option.)
I’m using Firefox, not Chrome. OS is Windows 7 Professional, Service Pack 1. I’ll have to look into CutePDF…probably my best option.
In general, the “print to PDF” tools, Adobe’s included, often do a poor job of creating a clean, accurate page image. If you’re working from nothing but text pages, they can do okay, but if you’re including images, or application-created graphics, they can go 'orribly wrong.
If you have Acrobat, using the app’s real Print function and selecting PDF as the printer will do a much better job. It sounds like the same thing, and Adobe and the other makers have gone a long ways to make it sound like an either/or choice, but it’s not.
Most of the Acrobat clones offer something like that full-scale print driver as well. If you get in the habit of “printing” your PDFs that way, instead of with quicky shortcuts like those that get embedded in Word and browsers and such, you’ll cut a whole lotta aggravation out of your work day.
Jinx, from what apps are you trying to print?
More and more apps offer “Print to PDF” as a built-in feature. For example, all MS Office apps from 2010 on offer “Save as PDF”. Which is even better than “print to PDF”, since it can include functional features like table of contents, indexes, etc. in addition to just pictures of words on pictures of paper.
If you want print to PDF from any/all apps, then CutePDF is the way to go. The price can’t be beat and the features are adequate for simply saving simple output.
PDF shouldn’t need any more “features” than any other print driver. The job of both paper and file printers is to render an output page image that’s exactly what the user expects. Anything else is gravy (and probably creeping featuritis).
The "print to PDF’ features embedded in most apps often don’t meet that criterion, which is why I suggest avoiding them. The one in Word is iffy, and the one in QuickBooks (at least through v2013) completely ignores things like fonts and scaling.
Firefox has a native print-to-PDF option too. In fact, when you select print from the Firefox menu (the three horizontal bars forming a square) the print preview you see is a simulated PDF.
Where is the print-to-PDF option in Firefox? I can’t find it.
When you click print from the printer selection screen, select “print to file”.
Thirding CutePDF, it installs as a “printer”, so you just print to it from any app that supports printing, and instead of a printed document you get a PDF.
I suppose we simply have different tastes.
The PDF format contains a lot more capability than simply rendering pictures of paper. Hence all the cool stuff the real Acrobat app can do. An app that can correctly employ more of the features of PDF format is (generally) superior to one that can’t. To be sure, an example like your QuickBooks, that can’t even get the basics right, is worse than useless.
Going back to app design in general, an app should do every use case the user wants, and very little more. And that “very little” is simply there to allow for users’ desires growing as they develop proficiency with their processes and discover new use cases they didn’t realize they had.
Which is why I went back to the OP: What are his use cases? If he’s just trying to save random web page-views offline that’s one thing. If he’s trying to create and distribute unalterable versions of sorta-complex multi-media documents with standard expected features like tables of contents, that’s something else. Right tool for the problem at hand and all that.
Since neither you nor I know what Jinx actually wants to do, we’re both free to guess and apply our experiences (and prejudices) to whatever we imagine he wants.
Yeah, no argument. But I’ve spent too long in the whirled of computer graphics and publication to expect most users to have ANY understanding of PDF except, vaguely, as a way to “print to a file.” 
I had a very negative reaction to Acrobat DC - it looked at first like it had swallowed the “Metro” interface concept whole. But after a few weeks, I am really liking the clean, orderly arrangement of features. And yes, there is immense power within the full implementation.
PrimoPDF is another free program that has a few extra options. My favorite is the ability to append to an existing pdf file. I do some design and graphics work and sometimes add pages to a PDF straight from my graphics program.
This is one of the odd things that I really appreciate about Mac OS, the included PDF viewer has a pretty good feature set. I regularly have to manipulate PDFs e.g., inserting blank pages, creating new PDFs, move pages around within a PDF, and so on. Preview is great for this type of thing.
I use NitroPDF (IIRC an option along with Primo). I like it because it also allows you to save inputted form information as well, although the others may do this too for all I know.
Combining PDF files can be done with any number of online tools.
For Windows I use PDF995.
Classicaly, you could only save to a PDF file if you bought and paid into the Adobe business. Simple business model, all could read a PDF, few could create.
I first noticed the change with Open Office which allowed Documents to be saved in PDF.
However, as far as I know these PDFs couldn’t be subsequently altered in the same format.
Still life is short and patience even shorter, read the pdf, convert, alter as needs be, read again and hope that the conversion back to PDF is correct is OK.
Alternatively use an open document format, ODF anyone?
Peter