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Save File As When you say OK to print, you will then be prompted for the name of the PDF file that you want to save. The default name will be the name of the Access report. If this is a report that you need to keep (such as an invoice), you will need to manually enter a new file name or the report will be overwritten the next time you save the report.
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Watermarks Etc The Distiller printer driver is very smart in that it
allows you to make a number of changes to the report before it is saved
in PDF format . One alteration that is worth
noting is the use of Watermarks. In figure 3, I have added a custom
watermark to inform the customer that the invoice that I am sending them is overdue.
Figure 4 show the result on the converted PDF file.
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Sharing Your Distiller Output
As the PDF output is handed through a printer driver, I set the properties of the printer driver on my machine to network Shared and then went to another machine and used the shared Distiller printer driver to print to. Surprisingly the file was converted to PDF and displayed on the machine where the printer driver was set up. This process did not allow you to change the name of the file and having Acrobat jump up on a machine that is being used by another person would be quite odd if they didn't know it was going to happen. But I guess that you would save on installing the Acrobat software on another machine if it was only going to be used very occasionally. i.e. a Laptop.

Figure 7 - You can share your Adobe Distiller software across the network
(with some odd results)
Summing Up
PDF files are a very popular way of saving, viewing and sharing documents. Because the Acrobat PDF reader is freely available on most corporate PC's and Macs, it is an important technology to understand. As you can see from the examples above, saving to PDF format is a relatively easy for any user who has a modest understanding of files and printer drivers.
Unfortunately, the control of where these files are stored is in the hands of the users so if you want programmatically save documents such as Access reports, you are going to be reliant on the users of your software to use a file naming convention and to store the reports in a standard folder.
The other major issue to consider is the price of the full Acrobat software package. If you need to install a printer driver on every machine, you are going to have software cost very similar to the cost of installing Access on every machine.
If cost or file management is a worrying factor, you can always use the free Access snapshot format that is available for Access 97 Service pack 1 upwards. This format is not very popular and it will not run on Macs and other non Windows equipment.
All in all, Adobe Acrobat and its Distiller printer driver is a very high quality software product that will enhance any business where reports and transfer of documents is important.
Now you may want to read about other PDF generators
and printer drivers that our readers have recommended
Links for resources on cheap PDF File
Generators
Click on the
button for the next page in this Access Loop.
Other Related pages at vb123 are
Issue 7 of Access Unlimited - save your reports and maps with Adobe Acrobat
Microsoft FreeStuff - Download the Snapshot Driver software for Access 97
Issue 18 Of Access Unlimited - More on the Access Snapshot
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