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Converting Web Pages to Adobe PDF

Have you ever printed a page directly from the Web, and discovered with dismay that the finished product looked nothing like the original version onscreen? The Adobe Creative Team shows how Adobe Acrobat 9 can help solve that problem (and others!) by enabling you to save a web page directly to PDF.
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With Adobe Acrobat 9, you can convert or "capture" selected content on a web page, the entire web page, or several levels of a multipage website for conversion to PDF. You can define a page layout, set display options for fonts and other visual elements, and create bookmarks for web pages that you convert to Adobe PDF. The HTML file and all associated filesโ€”such as JPEG images, cascading style sheets, text files, image maps, and formsโ€”are included in the conversion process, so the resulting PDF behaves much like the original web page. Because converted web pages are in Adobe PDF, you can easily save or print them, email them to others, or archive them for your own future use and review.

Connecting to the Web

Before you can download and convert web pages to Adobe PDF, you must be able to access the Web. If you need help with setting up an Internet connection, talk to your Internet service provider (ISP). When you have a connection to the Internet, you can set your Acrobat Internet preferences for handling web page conversion.

  1. To access your Internet preferences, in Acrobat choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS), and select Internet in the left pane of the Preferences dialog box. Click the Internet Settings button (Windows) or Network Settings button (Mac OS) to check your network settings. On Windows, your settings are on the Connections tab. Exit this dialog box without making any changes.

    By default, several Internet preference options that control how Acrobat interacts with your web browser are automatically set to be on:

    • Display PDF in Browser displays any PDF document opened from the Web inside the browser window. If this option is not selected, PDF documents open in a separate Acrobat window.
    • Allow Fast Web View downloads PDF documents for viewing on the Web one page at a time. If this option is not selected, the entire PDF file downloads before it's displayed. If you want the entire PDF document to continue downloading in the background while you view the first page of requested information, also select Allow Speculative Downloading in the Background.
    • Allow Speculative Downloading in the Background allows a PDF document to continue downloading from the Web, even after the first requested page displays. Downloading in the background stops when any other task (such as paging through the document) is initiated in Acrobat.
  2. When you have finished reviewing your Internet settings, click OK in the Preferences dialog box to apply any changes you have made, or click Cancel to exit the dialog box without making any changes.

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