How do I… turn a text file into a PDF?

PDF stands for portable document format, an increasingly popular type of file found on the Web.

The popularity of PDFs stems from the ability to preserve the exact look and arrangement of an original document, insuring that the original always looks the same, no matter how many times it’s used or transmitted or viewed on different operating systems.

When you want the option of adding or creating a PDF, the choices are vast. As the keepers of PDFzone (pdfzone.com) point out, they include Adobe’s top-of-the-line product, Acrobat 8 ($299) or, for ordinary consumer use, a basic utility such as ScanSoft PDF Converter ($49.99).

If you prefer a quick and dirty online conversion, there are dozens of sites for that purpose. Among them are Create PDF Online (http://createpdf.adobe.com) or PDF Online (pdfonline.com). Once there, you cut and paste the file text you want converted, and then request the conversion.

Macintosh users have built-in support for saving documents as PDFs, available when choosing to print. So does the OpenOffice suite.

If you have the opposite issue — wanting to convert a PDF file into either HTML or plain text, try Adobe, the company that originated the PDF file; its free converter can be found at: adobe.com/products/acrobat/ access_onlinetools.html.