Using PDFCreator to Save Print Jobs as Individual PDF Files

Once you have installed PDFCreator, it's easy to use it to document anything that Windows will print. All you have to do is to use the Windows Print dialog box to select PDFCreator as the "printer" that you want to use.

When you print, next, you'll get the PDFCreator dialog box shown in the image on the right. The Document Title will be filled in with the name of the file you're printing.

If you're ready to save that individual print job as a PDF file, click on the Save button. That will open the standard Windows Save File dialog box, which you can use to navigate to the folder where you want to save the file and in which you set the file name.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

If you're not ready to save that individual print job as a PDF file, click on the "Wait – button. That will open the PDFCreator PDF Print Monitor. At that point, you can print a second document, print a third document, etc.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

When you're ready to save the individual documents, you've got two options. They are not particularly obvious or intuitive, until you remember that PDFCreator works by telling Windows that it is a printer.

When you select the Wait – Collect button, PDFCeator puts a Stop or hold on its printing. You can see that in the image on the left below — there's a checkmark beside "Printer stop." That's our hint.

So, to save the first item we have in our list, we can either click on the Printer stop item in PDFCreator's printer list, or we can click on the Printer button (notice thte red x superimposed on the side of the printer.

At that point, PDFCreator will open the standard Windows Save File dialog box, which you can use to navigate to the folder where you want to save the file and in which you set the file name.

After you save the first item, you get the Safe File dialog box for the next item you "printed."

In the next article, we'll look at combining multiple prints into one PDF document.

Related articles:

• Creating PDF Files with PDFCreator
• Using PDFCreator to Combine and Save Multiple Prints in One PDF File

Copyright © 2009 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.