Why pay the high price?

Every once in a while a patron will come along with the need to create or edit a pdf file, often it is a downloaded application form. They have no idea that this is really a proprietory file type and usually not set up to be fillable. They are even more surprised to hear the cost of a version of Adobe that will allow them to edit or create pdf files. Luckily a number of resources now exist that can do this for free and in a number of ways. This isn't quite new info, but many of us don't do this everyday. And it doesn't hurt to bookmark some tools ahead of time.

PDFfiller.com: An online service that allows you to upload pdf forms in order to fill them out. However, a quick and free registration is required to print or save the end result.

Several online conversion tools exist that can convert just about any file type to another. Zamzar, PDFonline, and expressPDF are just a few.

Then comes the freeware that you may have to install, but can do the trick. PDFcreator (find at sourceforge.net) and DoPDF (dopdf.com) are little programs that set up "virtual printers" that will allow you to convert documents into pdf via the print funciton of programs like Word.