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If you go to www.omniformat.com, you'll see their product. It's free, but displays an ad each time you use it (and if you've got some kind of ad blocking you might not even see that). You can purchase it pretty cheaply if you want to. The license is under $10 per user. Depending on how many licenses you want it can be pretty affordable. The way it works is that you install it and it appears as a printer driver. There are actually two different ways to use their products. The first is by way of their PDF995 printer driver, and the second is by way of their Omniformat Watch Folder. How does it work? 1. PDF995. Once installed, this appears in the printer list just like a laser, inkjet, etc. When you want to save a pdf form you're filling in, you just go to print it, and instead of using your laser jet or whatever, use the PDF995 priter driver. The results is a new pdf form WITH ALL OF THE INFO THAT WAS ENTERED IN IT. It's not editable, but I'd say that's good when you're done. 2. PDF995. If you want to start out with word processing documents or spreadsheets, or even text files, it works the same way. You just go to print it as normal, only choose the PDF995 printer driver. It works the same way. You select that "printer" and it creates a file instead of a paper copy. 3. Omniformat. Another option is to create a "Watch Folder", which will do everything just as in option 2 above. Instead however, of using the printer driver interactively, you would just save the document in the "Watch Folder" on a PC in your network. The Omniformat program is installed on that PC as a service, and it keeps running and running (yep, just like the Energizer Bunny) in background. It notices the file has been put there, then processes it through, creates the pdf and will even delete the original file that was put into the watch folder for you. I'm not sure, and won't swear to it, but I seem to remember that there's an option for the output file to be put somewhere else. The last option might be the best for you, but maybe not on a PC that someone is using, as it's a bit of a memory hog. Well, that was my test experience. I put the free version on one PC, and installed it as a service just to see how it would work with a networked PC. It worked, but the CPU usage maxed out. Of course, I was running a couple of databases, my email, Access, and all sorts of other gobbldy-gook at the same time, so I took it off. So let's say you spend twenty or thirty bucks to try it out. If it doesn't work, just brown bag it for a few days instead of going out to lunch, and you've recouped your loss. You can still use the PDF995 on your own PC and don't have to help Adobe sales go higher when you don't want to. I had a project proposal I needed to email out to a customer, and when I looked at it discovered it was over a megabyte in size. Not knowing whether or not they had restrictions on the size of incoming emails, and not having the full Acrobat on the PC, I decided to try PDF995 as an experiment. I ran it through, and the resulting file was 10% the size of the original. It worked like a charm. OK, now I can't vouch for quality. It was fine for what I needed (text, a logo, a couple of jpg screen shots). If you're talking high quality graphics you might have to look elsewhere, I just don't know. But like I said, what the heck, it's cheap enough to try it out. What can you lose? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Olivia Ross Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 8:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PDF-Forms] PDF Print driver? PDF-Forms is a service provided by PDFzone.com | http://www.pdfzone.com/ __________________________________________________________________ George, My company wished to replace paper with electronic forms. The main hurdle for us which is very frustrating, is your exact problem. Olivia -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of G Sent: Wednesday, 17 December 2003 1:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PDF-Forms] PDF Print driver? PDF-Forms is a service provided by PDFzone.com | http://www.pdfzone.com/ __________________________________________________________________ I have a multi-page form that I distribute in PDF and Excel formats. The users of the form typically do not have Adobe Acrobat or any other means to create a PDF file. Adobe Reader will allow filling in the form but will not allowing saving of the file with the form field data. I have had several people tell me that they have seen free or very inexpensive PDF print drivers but I have not been able to find one. Do any of you know of a free or very inexpensive PDF print driver? George To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdfforms.html To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdfforms.html To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdfforms.html
