Dealing with PDFs

The main advantage of PDF files is that they are pretty much universal: anyone can view them with Adobe’s Reader and they are very web-compatible.  Also, if you’re trying to cut down on paper usage (either to save space or money) electronic versions of files are a great alternative.  Here are two apps that I have found really useful from time to time:

PDFTK Builder

I use this program mostly in one of two scenarios:

1. I used the school’s scanner to scan some pages from a book into PDF, but the stupid scanner only lets me save one page at a time, leaving me with 5 different PDF files for 5 scanned pages.  I also often end up with upside-down pages because it was more convenient (quick) to scan in that orientation.
2. I have a PDF worksheet, and want to post it for the students, but it has extra pages that I want to exclude.

Enter, PDFTK Builder.  This simple, free Windows program will combine, split, rotate, collate, and password-protect PDF files.  Its PDF-alicious!  Download it from the PDFTK Builder Site.

CutePDF Writer

Cute PDF Writer installs as a printer on your computer, so you can convert anything that you can print into PDF.  Potential teacher uses:

• You have a Word document that you want to distribute on a shared drive, but you don’t want any of the students to be able to modify it.  Make it into a PDF!
• You have files for programs that are not common or free, but you still want to share the content with your students.
• You want to back-up your grades from Easy Grade Pro (or other grading program) but don’t want to have to keep stacks of printouts.
• A particular reference web page that you want the students to use is blocked from your school.  Print it into a PDF and post that instead.
• You filled out some online form for administrative purposes and need to keep a record.  Print it to PDF and keep the file.

You can download CutePDF Writer from FileHippo.  Alternatively, if you want an open-source app that does the same thing, there’s PDFCreator, which is more powerful but also less easy to use.

PDF Hammer

If you don’t want to install any software on your computer (or you have a Mac), you can use the web-based PDF Hammer.  It has fewer features than PDFTK Builder, but will do simple combine, merge, reorder, and delete, of pages within multiple PDF files and let you download the result.  The same company also has a PDFtoWord web utility that does exactly as its name implies (which is useful if you actually want to edit an existing PDF document).

Acrobat.com

Although it’s still in Beta, Adobe (the company that is behind the whole PDF format) has released its own web application for dealing with PDFs called Acrobat.com.  Currently, it doesn’t let you edit existing PDFs, but it will let you upload other files, store them on their server, convert them to pdf, and even share them with others.  You can also create your own PDF documents from scratch with their “Buzzwords” app.