They'll See Your PDF the Way You Sent It

EPrint 3 and PowerPDF 2 let you create, send, and print PDF files.

Dennis O'Reilly

My CPA e-mailed me a copy of the quarterly newsletter he sends to his clients, but the attachment didn't look right on my PC. Even worse, he said, some clients couldn't open the file at all. If only he had used one of the new breed of utilities that convert files and documents into Adobe's Portable Document Format so anyone with the Adobe Reader program could have viewed his newsletter as he intended.

Do you only occasionally need to convert a document to PDF? Try a program such as PdfEdit995, which is available free (with banner ads). If you regularly send files that need to be viewable on any kind of system, however, you'll benefit from the added functionality of Xelerate's $50 PowerPDF 2 or Leadtools' $99 EPrint 3.

Think of these programs as printer drivers on steroids. After you install one, it appears as a printer option in any application that supports printing; simply choose the option from the drop-down list in the app's Print dialog box. When you click OK, the program opens a new dialog box that allows you to save your file in PDF form, send it by e-mail, or (of course) just print it.

PowerPDF gives you far greater control than EPrint offers over the PDF files you create, but EPrint provides a lot more options for printing and file conversion. PowerPDF lets you preview the document, e-mail it with a single click, and set it to be compatible with special features in Adobe Reader 3, 4, or 5. You can also select specific fonts to embed--or to reduce file size, you can choose not to embed any, taking your chances with the fonts installed on the recipient's machine. The program lets you create custom watermarks to protect your work from unauthorized copying, and it provides five different image-compression settings, along with a one-click option to reduce the size of all raster images to 72 dpi to optimize them for viewing on a browser.

EPrint permits you to save files in hundreds of other formats, including Photoshop (.psd), Windows Metafile Formats (.wmf and.emf), and WordPerfect Graphics (.wpg). It also gives you five resolution options, as well as the ability to send jobs to several printers (and e-mail recipients) at once.

EPrint has a good screen-capture utility that lets you grab a full screen or any combination of on-screen elements. Place it in your Quick Launch toolbar for fast access to individual capture functions, or do your grabbing via hot-key combinations.

EPrint is much clunkier to use than PowerPDF, however: You have to set its e-mail options manually, for example (PowerPDF links to your default e-mail client automatically); and the lack of a preview option means that, to check how a file looks, you have to open it in the target application before you print or transmit it.

For a fast and simple way to create, send, and print PDFs, PowerPDF is your program. Meanwhile, EPrint will give you more output alternatives than you can shake a mouse at.

Buying Information

Leadtools EPrint 3 3 stars (3/28/2003) A one-stop file-conversion utility with a rough interface. Price when tested: $99 Current prices, if available.

Buying Information

Xelerate Software PowerPDF 2 4 stars (3/28/2003) Full of PDF creation options, but supports fewer file formats. Price when tested: $50 Current prices, if available.