John Dirks Jr Posted October 15, 2011 Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 Hi all, I'm in the process of setting up a new laptop for business. For those of you that use Word and then convert to PDF, which one of the free PDF converters do you like best? The one on my current machine is a purchased one that I cant duplicate without contacting the vendor and all that. If I can use a free program that works well, I'll just go that route. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terence McCann Posted October 15, 2011 Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 The one on my current machine is a purchased one that I cant duplicate without contacting the vendor and all that. If I can use a free program that works well, I'll just go that route. If you purchased the program John why wouldn't you contact the vendor for the key? Do you want to use another program having already paid for one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Lamb Posted October 15, 2011 Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 I have been using the free Cute for a long time. No problems at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dirks Jr Posted October 16, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2011 The one on my current machine is a purchased one that I cant duplicate without contacting the vendor and all that. If I can use a free program that works well, I'll just go that route. If you purchased the program John why wouldn't you contact the vendor for the key? Do you want to use another program having already paid for one? I'm not sure yet but the previous purchase might be one user license and I'll have two computers running. Don't know if that will be an issue or not. Anyway, good functioning free software is worthy too, right? So to answer your question Terry, I don't have a lock solid reason why I wouldn't contact the vendor. I'm just weighing other options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terence McCann Posted October 16, 2011 Report Share Posted October 16, 2011 The one on my current machine is a purchased one that I cant duplicate without contacting the vendor and all that. If I can use a free program that works well, I'll just go that route. If you purchased the program John why wouldn't you contact the vendor for the key? Do you want to use another program having already paid for one? I'm not sure yet but the previous purchase might be one user license and I'll have two computers running. Don't know if that will be an issue or not. Anyway, good functioning free software is worthy too, right? So to answer your question Terry, I don't have a lock solid reason why I wouldn't contact the vendor. I'm just weighing other options. Understood - I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted October 16, 2011 Report Share Posted October 16, 2011 With the number of pictures that I like to include in my reports, the choice of pdf converter I use is crucial. Every free converter that I've sampled leaves me with a pdf file size that easily double what I get from Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro. Even the pdf converter included with my 3d inspection software makes most reports too large to Email. Marc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Katen Posted October 16, 2011 Report Share Posted October 16, 2011 If you use Word 2007 or 2010, it includes a dandy PDF converter. It even addressed Marc's concern about file sizes making very compact files that retain good picture quality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurt Posted October 16, 2011 Report Share Posted October 16, 2011 Spend $50 and get .pdfFactory. Teeny files, and you can concatenate all the various other files you might want to include in the report. Far and away the most useful .pdf converter. Most of the free one's are fine; they're free, try them all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dirks Jr Posted October 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2011 If you use Word 2007 or 2010, it includes a dandy PDF converter. It even addressed Marc's concern about file sizes making very compact files that retain good picture quality. Actually, I just installed Word 2010. I did not realize it had built in PDF converter. I'll give it a try. I bet it has other things I don't realize as well. My older comp is running Word 2002. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dirks Jr Posted October 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2011 What I really need to try is moving my Normal.Dot file from the old machine to the new on. Hopefully I'll retain all my AutoText entries from Word 2002 and have them work in Word 2010. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted October 17, 2011 Report Share Posted October 17, 2011 I've Word 2010 on a vista platform and an advanced search of normal.dot yielded this path: C:\Users\Marc\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft It's a hidden file. Only an advanced search will find it. Observe the direction of the slash. It's not in the same location as Word 2002. I've no idea if a 2002 format normal.dot will work on Word 2010. Marc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dirks Jr Posted October 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2011 I got it done. In 2002 its called normal.dot. In 2010 its called normal.dotm. I pasted the older version in but it did not work at first. I went back and removed the dotm file in 2010 and left the dot file in by itself and now all of my saved auto text entries are there and working well. I'm now playing with the new styles options. Way better and way smoother than my clumsy old 2002 version. I'm gonna like this new setup. I bet the clumsy fumbling glitches on 2002 cost me an average of 30 mins on each report, seriously. I've played with the PDF convertor. I think I'll stick with the larger file option. It keeps the pic res high for clear zooming. The smaller file option degraded the pictures too much for my preference. My smaller reports will go out averaging 1MB and the larger ones maybe 3MB. In my opinion, 3MB is not too big. What other ways can 2010 Word help that 2002 couldn't? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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