Help please, PDF writer / word pad converter

[cleanworkbench]

Hi everyone .
Not exactly on topic but !.
Can anyone help with where i can download a good freeware program that i can write PDF documents in and also have the capability to convert from wordpad documents to PDF.
Looking for an easy to use program please

[MatthewEveritt]

If you're using windows 10 there's a built in pdf printer, if not CutePDF is free.

I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials to help you get set up, then using it is as simple as pressing print on whatever document you're working on and selecting the pdf printer.

[voltsandjolts]

http://www.primopdf.com/

[cleanworkbench]

Thanks for the info
Here , Win 7 , need to fill in forms / sheets in pdf, wont be doing printing .

[tpowell1830]

Thanks for the info
Here , Win 7 , need to fill in forms / sheets in pdf, wont be doing printing .

PDFCreator is a free download and when it installs, it looks like a printer to all applications. When you select a printer to print your WordPad file, you select PDFcreator and it makes a pdf file of your WordPad document on your disk drive (or SD Card). This does not print to a device, simply to a file. The file has the pdf extension and you can open with Acrobat Reader, etc.
 
Hope this helps...

[HoracioDos]

You can use LibreOffice Writer. It can open wordpad documents and export them to PDF. If you want only a PDF printer I would recommend foxitreader.

[rdl]

There is a portable version of Foxit Reader which I use when I need to fill in forms  such as tax returns, the rest of the time I use Sumatra PDF (portable version), since it does not execute active content (embedded scripts, etc). To create original pdf files, I use Libre Writer.

[macboy]

If you have a google account, then you can upload just about anything to your Google Drive, and open it in Google Docs from there. Then you can edit, run OCR, translate to another language, etc.  Finally, go to File menu, Download as... and pick PDF (or many other formats).

[cleanworkbench]

Thanks , i will give these a go.

[Zero999]

Thanks for the info
Here , Win 7 , need to fill in forms / sheets in pdf, wont be doing printing .

PDFCreator is a free download and when it installs, it looks like a printer to all applications. When you select a printer to print your WordPad file, you select PDFcreator and it makes a pdf file of your WordPad document on your disk drive (or SD Card). This does not print to a device, simply to a file. The file has the pdf extension and you can open with Acrobat Reader, etc.
 
Hope this helps...

Be careful only to install PDFCreator. The default installed comes with a lot of dodgy software which most people don't want and is installed, unless the checkbox is deselected. I also prefer the older version, but can't remember which one that was.

[Electro Detective]

A decent freeware printer driver is an easy solution,

Once installed and PC restarted, open the document and go into the File Menu selection, select 'Print'

but instead of Print to a printer, you Print to PDF

Been using doPDF for a while with no issue, not sure what the current version thing is nowadays,
and if you need more features like editing or produce top quality indexed PDFs etc they have programs for that too 

www.dopdf.com/


EDIT: The PDF files produced do have searchable text

[ez24]

Reading along. 

I used to be able to read, print, save as, etc., PDFs just fine.  Then during a Firefox update, things got so screwy that I do not know which end is up.  I cannot even start trying to tell the steps it takes me now to print or read a PDF.  So this is very interesting and I was also thinking of asking for help.

[Zero999]

Reading along. 

I used to be able to read, print, save as, etc., PDFs just fine.  Then during a Firefox update, things got so screwy that I do not know which end is up.  I cannot even start trying to tell the steps it takes me now to print or read a PDF.  So this is very interesting and I was also thinking of asking for help.

That's odd. Have you tried reinstalling Firefox?

[Peabody]

I agree on the various printer drivers for creating the PDF.  But for creating the original RTF, I've used Jarte, which is somewhat more capable than Wordpad - lets you insert pics, etc.

[beanflying]

+1 for Libre Office. One click save as PDF in writer and the draw and calc options work great.

MS has no place on my PC's !

[Zero999]

I agree on the various printer drivers for creating the PDF.  But for creating the original RTF, I've used Jarte, which is somewhat more capable than Wordpad - lets you insert pics, etc.

I've never heard of Jarte.

If you just want a decent word processor, there's AbiWord, but the latest versions are no longer released for Windows. You can still get older versions, but I don't know if they'll work on the latest Windows versions.

[rsjsouza]

One issue that used to happen in all PDF writers that are printer drivers is that they saved the file as an "image" PDF, which is not searchable or modifiable. Last time I evaluated this was a few years ago, but perhaps this changed today.

I use LibreOffice or Microsoft Office to save to PDFs. I dabbed a bit on Foxit PDF Editor but I haven't had the need to edit an existing file in years.

[Electro Detective]

I agree on the various printer drivers for creating the PDF.  But for creating the original RTF, I've used Jarte, which is somewhat more capable than Wordpad - lets you insert pics, etc.

I've never heard of Jarte.

If you just want a decent word processor, there's AbiWord, but the latest versions are no longer released for Windows. You can still get older versions, but I don't know if they'll work on the latest Windows versions.

I just tried Jarte out of curiosity, jarte.com/
something different and tabbed pages too 

It doesn't convert docs to PDF, nor does it open docx files

but it does Print to PDF if an appropriate PDF Printer driver is already installed

and you can open a docx document in Wordpad and Save As RTF or whatever Jarte can use, and go from there

Jarte is a pimped up Wordpad   

[Peabody]

Yes, I use Jarte with the PrimoPDF printer driver, and it seems to work fine.  And with respect to an earlier comment, at least for this combination I do get a searchable-text PDF out of it, not just an image of the page.  But of course you can insert images if you like.

It's just a reasonably capable RTF editor.  Nothing like Word capabilities, but good enough for the girls I date most of the time.

[rsjsouza]

I tried out Jarte yesterday and could export nice searchable PDFs with it using the File --> Export function. Hyperlinks weren't functional, but I suspect it was my PDF reader. 

That made me retest the Print to PDF functionality of both Foxit it Print to PDF and Microsoft Print to PDF. Both generate searchable texts as well with functional hyperlinks, which is enough for me. 

[ez24]

That's odd. Have you tried reinstalling Firefox?

Just reinstalled Firefox and it is much better.  Not as good as before.  A PDF opens correctly (from a website) but when I go to print it, another tab opens and the PDF reloads.  But still this much better and I can live with this
thanks