Creating PDFs With Microsoft Office Applications

Follow these steps to create a Portable Document Format (PDF) file using Microsoft Office applications.

Once you've created your PDF, follow the steps for formatting for accessibility and search engine optimization to ensure your PDF is ready to post.

Step 1. Select Adobe PDF as Your Printer.

Select Adobe PDF as your printer so your document will be formatted for postscript PDF creation. Although you can create a PDF without selecting Adobe PDF as your printer, the document will reflow based on the printer you have selected, and you will not get consistent results.

Step 2. Close the Print Dialog Box.

The "Cancel" button in the print dialog box changes to a "Close" button when you change a printer. Click "Close" instead of "OK," or the document will print through Adobe PDF printer instead of PDFMaker.

PDF creation through PDFMaker allows you to retain interactive elements (such as bookmarks and links) that you select in your PDFMaker settings. Interactive elements cannot be carried through when printing through Adobe PDF printer.

Step 3. Set Acrobat Preferences.

Select Acrobat from the ribbon menu, and click on the "Preferences" button. These preferences control how the PDF is created and what functionality is added when you click the "Create PDF" button. These are "sticky" settings, so anything you select here will stay until you change it again.

  • Settings Tab
    • Select StdWeb72, StdWeb150, or StdPrint.
    • Select Prompt for Adobe PDF file name.
    • Select "Add Links" or "Create Bookmarks," if desired.
    • Select "Enable Accessibility" and "Reflow with Tagged Adobe PDF."
  • Security Tab: Leave everything unchecked.
  • Word Tab: Select only the options you want for your current PDF. Selecting options that are not pertinent to your document will unnecessarily slow PDF creation.
  • Bookmarks Tab: If styles and headings were used in the document, select the appropriate levels of automatic bookmark generation.

The settings above are specific to Word documents. Excel and PowerPoint have slightly different tabs and options; select as appropriate.

Step 4. Create the PDF.

Click the PDFMaker "Create PDF" button.

Step 5. Save.

Save the file.

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