One Way
to PDF
By
Catherine Robinson
I had a difficult time trying to create a PDF of our online HTML version of the Signature newsletter. As I experimented and ran into difficulties, Lana Walker-Helmuth and Mark Hall came to my rescue and gave me the ideas I needed to get this task done.
Rather than choose to print to "Acrobat PDFMaker" or "Acrobat Distiller," I chose to open the Web page as PDF. I liked the navigation links that resulted from choosing this method and felt that it was a better option for our readers.
Let me take you through the steps I took to create PDF from HTML for the Signature newsletter.
- In Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), go to File >
Open Web Page as PDF and open your
home page.
I browsed the Web and found the exact location of the first page of the newsletter. I then pasted that URL into the URL field in the Open Web Page dialog box (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Selecting options to open Web pages in PDF - Select Level 2 in Levels and check the boxes, Only
Get Pages Under Same Path and Stay on Same Server
(see Figure 1). (I did not change any of the settings in Conversion
Settings.)
When I selected Level 1 in Levels, only the first two pages of the newsletter were pulled into the PDF. I changed Level 1 to Level 2, and then all the newsletter pages were pulled into the PDF.
Note: When I selected Level 2, a second set of newsletter pages was created in the middle of the PDF. This was a result of the existing PDF on the Web site being downloaded with the rest of the files. I was able to delete these duplicate pages later in the process.
- Click Download. After the pages have finished downloading, the file opens up in Acrobat.
- Delete the unnecessary set of pages by going into the PDF and selecting the linked pages. Find the link with the plus sign (+), highlight this link, and right-click. Select Delete to delete the duplicated pages. This will dramatically reduce your PDF newsletter size.
- Save your file. You can rename the navigation links within your PDF document as you see fit.
- When you are done, save your file again.
I want to mention one technical difficulty I ran into after the conversion: the em-dashes in the articles did not convert properly. They appeared as little square boxes in the PDF. I do not know if this is a problem with fonts missing or my version of Acrobat 4.
I hope that one day this helpful tip comes in handy for you.
