Convert Files to PDF for Free Online

Posted by Kevin Nitz on October 13, 2006 | Post type: Gain

There comes a time when having something in PDF format is a necessity. It may be that PDF is the preferred format for your email recipients or maybe it's that you want to give someone a document but do not want them to have direct editing privileges. Whatever the case may be PDF Online comes to the rescue...and it's not limited to just documents.

PDF Online

PDF Online Basics

Although the website may be a bit visually jumbled, converting to PDF using PDF Online's interface is a breeze. Simply click on the "Convert to PDF for Free" link on the top left of the homepage and you are on your way. You will be redirected to a page where you select the document (or other supported file types, see below) to upload for conversion. PDF Online then gives you the opportunity to rename the output PDF file to something different than the original filename (the website defaults the output file to PDFonline.pdf). Finally, you input the email address where you would like the newly converted PDF file to be sent. Click the "Convert to PDF" button and that's it!

File Types Supported

PDF Online supports a range of file types for conversion to PDF. Here's the list:

Documents: DOC, PPT, XLS, RTF, PPS, HTML, TXT, and PUB

Images: JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, EMF, and WMF

Final Thoughts

Although the website may feel like a bad infomercial (with all of the other non-free products the site is pushing), your trip will be well served if you are looking for a quick, easy, and free way to convert files to PDF. The only limitation is the 2MB limit on file size for conversion, so you'll have to take your graphically-intensive PowerPoint slides elsewhere. For normal document conversion however, PDF Online works like a charm. Large documents took just minutes to arrive via email and small files arrived in seconds.

About the author(s)

Kevin has been involved with Pain in the Tech since October 2006.

Comments

# Andy Atkinson at 10/14/2006 12:59 pm cst
I've got some suggestions I use for conversion to PDF. Of course in OS X, saving to PDF is supported natively. - export to PDF for free from [Zoho Writer](/zoho_writer_an_online_word_processor) - use [OpenOffice](http://www.openoffice.org/) to bring in `.doc` and other file types documents and then save them to PDF [Foxit Reader](http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php) is a great lightweight alternative to Acrobat Reader. Version 2.0 was recently released for Windows.

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# JJ at 12/19/2006 9:22 pm cst
I have used a freeware program named: PDFCreator-o_9_3GPLGhostscript.exe for some time. It has met my PDF creation needs (and I'm not compelled to be online). Like Andy (previous comment), I also use Foxit Reader. It has only a small overhead and seems to be a lot less intrusive than the Adobe product.

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# Andy Atkinson at 1/20/2007 5:27 pm cst
I just successfully used PDF Online to convert some Amazon receipts to PDF. As they describe on their site, I used Internet Explorer's "Save As" > MHT file type to save the protected page as a single file (I don't see an equivalent in Firefox). Then I uploaded the MHT file to PDF Online, supplied my email address, and received the PDF in about 2 minutes. The receipt contains the type and last four digits of my credit card, but I feel comfortable with this information going across their servers, especially considering how easy and quick the conversion process was.

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# Connor at 12/12/2007 7:16 pm cst

I would just use one of those Print to PDF drivers. I've used this service and found it handy. If you're not on your home computer and you don't have the printer driver handy then I guess this would be more convenient. I think it would be a lot more secure to use a printer driver than to send your private credit card information over the internet, but hey, that's just my opinion.

Connor

thebigguyconnor.blogspot.com

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# Stephen at 8/26/2008 3:51 pm cst

Check out http://www.printinpdf.com. You will love it to convert your documents to PDF instantly.

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