Microsoft has recently released, or is on its way to releasing, several new high-profile products. Among them are XBOX 360, the Live platform (and several related services such as Office Live and Windows Live Search), Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007, and Windows Vista. In the media blitz for all these new products, a small announcement that Microsoft made last week went almost unnoticed. It released Microsoft Save as PDF, an add-in for Office 2007, which will allow you to save any Microsoft Office document as a PDF file.

Microsoft had initially planned to include the feature in Office 2007. But Adobe Systems, the inventor of PDF (Portable Document Format), did not take very kindly to Microsoft’s intentions because Adobe presumably makes a decent amount of money by selling PDF add-ins to Microsoft Office users. Adobe threatened legal action and Microsoft dropped the idea as a result.

But Save As PDF is a very useful feature and seems to have made its way back into Office 2007 through the back door. Why is this feature useful? There are several reasons. Here are just a few:

• PDF documents are platform independent. Adobe makes Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free PDF reader, for most operating systems. As long as you have a reader, whether from Adobe or from another source, you can read a PDF document regardless of whether you have a Windows PC, an Apple Mackintosh, or a Unix or Linux based computer. This feature makes PDF an ideal format for the web.
  
  


• The person opening a PDF document does not have to worry about how the document was created, nor does he need the application that was used to create the document. Let us say, for example, that you create a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet about the next year’s budget and e-mail it to your boss. Your boss then would have to have Microsoft Excel on his machine to be able to open and read your spreadsheet. If you make the budget with Microsoft Word, he would need Microsoft Word to be able to read it. If, on the other hand, you save the budget document as a PDF file, your boss couldn’t care less how you produced the document.  He can simply open and read you PDF document with a PDF reader.
  
  


• All fonts are embedded in the PDF documents. If you use an esoteric font, you don’t have to worry about whether the person reading your document has it on his machine. He will see the document exactly as you created it whether or not his computer has the font.
  
  


• Unlike Microsoft Word documents or Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, PDF documents can’t contain macro viruses, which is another good reason to use PDF files on the web or to attach them to e-mail messages.
  
  


• PDF documents can be printed on any printer attached to any computer.

What Adobe’s reaction to the new add-in is remains to be seen. But you don’t have to wait and watch while Microsoft and Adobe slug it out. PDF is a mature technology and there are several products, plug-ins, and add-ins on the market that can make PDF files.

Before we go any further, let me dispel a couple of common myths. First, Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is installed on most computers, CANNOT create PDF files. Its name says it all. It only reads PDF files that have been created using applications that can create PDF files. Second, PDF is NOT a proprietary specification; Adobe has made it available publicly. Therefore, anyone make software to create PDF files, not just Adobe.

Of course, Adobe does make a product that is capable of creating PDF files. It is called Adobe Acrobat (note that there is no Reader in the name). But it does much more than just creating PDF files. You can create printable forms with it and sign your documents digitally, for example. While Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free product, Adobe Acrobat is not. It sets you back by roughly three hundred dollars.

If you don’t plan to make use of any of Acrobat’s advanced features, however, all you need is an application capable of generating a file in PDF format. There are several such applications, and quite a few of them are absolutely free – no advertisements, no strings attached. The one I like, and use extensively, is PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com).

You can download the installer from the site and run the .exe file. The installer installs a printer driver. From then on, PrimoPDF appears as a printer on your computer. Now you can convert any document to PDF. Say you want to convert a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to PDF. To do so, follow these steps:

• Open the spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel


• Click File/Print


• In the Print dialog, click on the Printer Name dropdown


• Choose PrimoPDF as the printer (Remember, PrimoPDF installer installed it)


• Click OK. A PrimoPDF dialog will appear.


• Enter a name for your PDF document and click OK.


• That’s it. Your PDF document is created. Now you can post it to your website, e-mail it, or simply look at it and admire your handiwork.


• If you have trouble along the way, refer to an online manual at http://www.primopdf.com/free-pdf-userguide.asp.

Since PrimoPDF appears as a printer, you can convert absolutely any file to PDF. For example, I use Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 (SBA) for invoicing my clients. SBA can’t natively create an invoice in PDF format, but it can create it as a Microsoft Word document. So I generate the invoice as a Word document, print it with PrimoPDF, and e-mail to the appropriate client. I don’t have to worry about whether my client uses a PC, a Mac, or a Commodore 64.

In general, I don’t like free applications. They come with quite a few strings attached - usually too many for my liking. But once in a while a truly nice and truly free application comes along. I have shared a couple with you so far in past columns–Office Live and My Private Folder.  PrimoPDF is a worthy addition to that short list.