Whether at the corporate level or for personal use, printing is a common task. However, paper printing can be quite hard to manage and also a waste of paper. This is where printing to PDF will help you build print-ready, readable and un-editable documents in a well-known file format.
The PDF format is quite good at keeping the original formatting, which makes it perfect for later printing as it will not change the original document’s look.
Apart from Windows 10, all other versions of Windows don’t support a native print to PDF option, so we will have to opt for third-party tools. In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to print to PDF using free tools.
Print to PDF with DoPDF
You can easily print hundreds of pages to PDF with a dedicated app. The app will integrate like a virtual printer and will print to PDF instead of a paper. For this purpose, we recommend DoPDF, which is a free tool created by Softland.
DoPDF comes as a desktop app that will let you print documents. It also adds a (virtual) printer in the main “Print option” of all the Windows apps, such as Microsoft word, excel, browsers and any application that offers a printing option.Download DoPDF and install the application. When you launch the app, you will see a “Preferences” option, click on it. Here, you will see all the options to customize how the printed PDF will look, including, orientation, size of the page and graphics. Customize the option as you please, or leave them as it is if you don’t have any special requirements and click on “OK”.
Now, click on “Browse” and select the file which you would like to print to PDF. Once selected, click on “Create” and you will see dialog with options to specify quality and save location. Just customize these options and click on “OK” to print the file as PDF.
Use DoPDF Virtual Printer Option
While installing, DoPDF adds a virtual printer to the native “Print option. All you need to do is select “DoPDF” as your default printer instead of your regular printer.
To print a web page all we need to do is press Ctrl+P to open printing option. Now, just select “DoPDF” for printing and click on “Print”.
You will see the DoPDF’s options to specify quality and save location again. Just customize the options and click on “OK” to print it.
Print Web page to PDF online
If you want to print a web page, you can also do so online without any need of downloading apps. For this purpose, Web2PDF is a good tool created by Baltsoft.
To print to PDF, all you need to do is copy the URL of the web page which you would like to print to PDF and paste it in the text field. Now just click on “Convert to PDF” and after short delay the page will be available to download as PDF.
If there are any questions or you know any other good tools, let us know in the comments below.