PDF Document Driving Me Crazy!

[TrinityJen]

I am not sure why but the .pdf documents from the directors cd are driving me crazy this year! That is where some of the best boarders are, but I can't use them for much of anything. The settings for 1 are not the same for the next. Like the directors calendar is for paper larger that 8.5 x 11, it has a large white boarder around it so when you shrink to fit the page the font is VERY small. I just printed a page that using 'shrink to printable area' made it about 1/2 a page in size, centered on my page. It would be nice if I could print 2 on a sheet, but I can't do that either.

My to top off my frustration today the computer I use at church (where I like to do my printing) will not print the modifiable .pdf documents. Most of the time it wont print any .pdf documents. So today when I was trying to get out a promotional letter I couldn't print the stationary I wanted! :( Eventually I had to use an older version of the letter with the boarder on it that I printed at home. I had to tape the changes over top of the old letter. :( It is not as nice as I wanted, but at least it is done.

My home printer only prints in color and the copier usually makes big black blobs, unless I print greyscale from the office printer.

I wish we had more of the clip art available as clip art! :eek:

Of course all that fighting with the church computer made me have a late lunch and I am still cranky! But my kids have gone to Grammy's and my hubby has promised me dinner out! :D My mailing will be ready to hand out at church on Sunday, and things will look brighter soon!

[houseparent]

If you have adobe Acrobat you could save the PDF as an image file and then use your Image software to add the text that you need.

Or

If you have Acrobat Professional you can change the formatting of the form fields to the font and text size that your need.

Or

If you don't have Acrobat Professional and you are like me and can't afford it on your personal computer (I have it on my work computer) you can get Scansoft PDF Professional and Edit the PDFs to suite your purpose.

It sells for less than a $100 and I use it for many things besides VBS, of course I also run my own website.

There may also be some inexpensive programs out there that will convert PDFs to an image file and then you can go back to option 1, but I haven't done much research on it.

Here us a link for a trial version of a converter that has no time or document limit but leaves a watermark on the converted image: http://www.pdf-to-jpg.com/

Here is one that lets you convert 3 pdfs to image files in the trial version (No Marks). The full version is only $39 so it would not be a huge investment.
http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com/

Hope this helps

[TrinityJen]

I only have Adobe Reader.....

But I just figured out that I can use my PDFCreator to print to PDF a modifiable form I want to save. I had different program that couldn't do that.

Then after reading your post Houseparent, I used PDFCreaor to make an image file and it worked! :D

A good dinner and a nice image file boarder is all I ask for!

[houseparent]

Also if you can get it to an image file you can use "Word" to add your text.

Insert the image and size it to take up the entire page, then change the object properties for it to align behind text

Right click on image>Click on-Format Picture>Layout>Behind Text

You can then insert a "Text Box" , or several depending on the your needs, and place your text in it.

It is easier to use the text box than to try to format your page to align with the image.

[TrinityJen]

Thanks Houseparent! Now that it is an image I am right in my comfort zone!

[houseparent]

Great. Hopefully somebody else will be able to use the information also.

[TrinityJen]

Most of them turned out OK. The one with the big logo and the park at the bottom didn't, too many details I guess. :(

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/th_Blank1MOD.jpg (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/Blank1MOD.jpg) http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/th_Blank2MOD.jpg (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/Blank2MOD.jpg) http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/th_Blank3MOD.jpg (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/Blank3MOD.jpg) http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/th_Blank4MOD.jpg (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/Blank4MOD.jpg)
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/th_PreviewPassMOD.jpg (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x151/TrinityJenVBS/VBS%202008%20SonWorld%20Adv%20Park/VBS%202006%20Stationery/PreviewPassMOD.jpg)

[houseparent]

Here I converted them using Adobe and the quality is a little better.

http://houseparent.net/VBS/Blank1MOD.jpg (http://www.houseparent.net/VBS/Blank1MOD.jpg)
http://houseparent.net/VBS/Blank2MOD.jpg (http://www.houseparent.net/VBS/Blank2MOD.jpg)
http://houseparent.net/VBS/Blank3MOD.png (http://www.houseparent.net/VBS/Blank3MOD.png)
http://houseparent.net/VBS/Blank4MOD.jpg (http://www.houseparent.net/VBS/Blank4MOD.jpg)

I couldn't get BlankMOD3 to work as a jpg file so I had to go with png.

[CammieSue]

Thank you houseparent and Trinity Jen - you saved me a few hours of frustration!!