Printing to a PDF

With EasyAs you have the ability to print your reports and invoices etc to the printer or to a file for email attachment.

Printing to PDF is not the same as the printing to file method which is available from within EasyAs. Please see this page for description of the printing to file method.

Printing to a PDF is also achievable from your pc and is a function of Windows. You will need additional software installed on your pc to achieve this (a free pdf writer is available)

A PDF file is simply a file much like a photo or any other file. For example a photo will usually end with the extension .jpeg or .jpg and a word document may end with .doc

A PDF file ends with the extension .pdf

To read a pdf file you need to download and install a pdf reader. Adobe has a pdf reader which is free to download and install. A pdf reader will not allow you to create a pdf but it will allow you to view pdf files.

Many online ebooks are now being sold as downloadable in pdf format, this saves the cost of distribution and printing etc.

You can download a free pdf reader from adobe (you may already have a pdf reader installed)... You can test this by clicking this link, your web browser or pdf reader should automatically open this file for viewing, if it does then you already have a reader installed.

If you need a reader click this link to go to adobe then click the link to get the "Adobe Reader"

The next thing you need to install is a pdf creator.

Companies such as adobe have sold pdf creators for years, however you do not need to purchase a pdf creator. Yes the pdf creator you can purchase from adobe does enable you the ability to do a lot of extra things that free pdf writers may not be able to.

But if you just want to do general printing in pdf format you can download a program free of charge.

Simply download and install dopdf on your pc.

dopdf will install as an additional printer. By going to the section in windows where your printers are installed you will now see dopdf as an additional printer.

Using the additional printer is very easy

If you already use a program like microsoft word or open office. you can now print using dopdf. When you print a letter from microsoft word you can use the menu system by clicking on the word File, then going down the drop down menu and clicking on the word print.

This will then bring up a popup box where you can select how many copies to print etc.. Somewhere on the popup (usually at the top) you will also have the ability to select which printer you want to print to. You can simply select dopdf and it will print and create a pdf for you of whatever is in the document your are wanting to print.

To make use of this facility with EasyAs you need to change the default printer setting of windows prior to printing. This is the only drawback of printing to a pdf with EasyAs. This is done by selecting your printer setup from windows and changing the default printer (this is the only way to print to a pdf for those using older versions of EasyAs)

Version 5 release of EasyAs has changed this an you now have the ability to select the printer you wish to use from within the software. So you can do this at the click of a mouse.

By selecting a printer from within EasyAs it will change the default printer setting of your windows software without you needing to navigate around windows to do it yourself.

With EasyAs you always had a ability to print invoices and quotes to the printer or to disk at any time. But you will now also have the ability to print to pdf at any time.

It will look like this:

In the image above you also have the ability to change the default printer setting from the main menu of easy as by clicking the printer icon located at the bottom left of the main menu.

Remember

Changing the Default Printer is a function of windows, EasyAs is simply making use of this function.

So if you change your printer setting to pdf and suddenly you need to print a standard report using your printer, you will have to change your printer setting back to the standard printer. But of course its only a click of the mouse.

If you exit EasyAs after you have set the default printer settings to pdf (for example) it will also be changed for ALL your other programs installed on your pc. As this is changing the Default Windows Settings not a Default EasyAs Setting.

If you do change your default printer settings, then exit EasyAs and discover that your other software does not provide you with a way to select your printer, then you can simply go back into EasyAs and change the setting or navigate Windows in the normal manner to change the Windows Default Printer Settings.

Changing the Settings from within EasyAs is only a mouse click away.

One More Point to Remember

There is nothing special you need to do to make use of this facility apart from installing the pdf software.

Any time you want to print a report, invoice or quote to a pdf file you simply click on the standard printer icon as if you are going to print onto a piece of paper.

This is the standard printer icon:

DO NOT get this mixed up with the saving of a file to disk using the .rtf method. This is a completely different approach and one has nothing to do with the other.