Technology Makes the World a Better Place

[rowyn]

Does anyone know an easy way to email one page from a .pdf using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0? For reasons too annoying to explain, I often need to email a single page, or a handful of pages, out of one ginorourmous pdf or other. Despite much clicking around inside the reader, I have not discerned any decent way to do this. The snapshot tool almost works, except that the resulting snapshots seem to be (a) illegible and/or (b) truncated. >.

Comments

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

Acrobat 8.0 Professional has the option "extract pages" under the "document" dropdown menu. Then you'd click the box labeled "extract as separate files". I don't know if Reader 7 has this feature, but it seems likely.

[rowyn]

Grumble, it doesn't. :( Is Adobe Professional a pay version or still free? I might some day get IT to agree to let me upgrade my work computer to Reader 8.0 but I doubt they'll spring for a license. :(

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately this is one of the features that separates the reader and professional versions of Acrobat.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Best way I have found is to print the necessary pages and send them. I recommend using one of the free PDF creators that install as a print driver to replace killing trees. I have had this backfire once with a locked PDF file, that one I had to print on paper and rescan before I could send it.

[rowyn]

Gahh, yeah. I was hoping for something less cumbersome than printing, and it's pulling teeth to get anything (even free stuff) installed at work (hence why I have Acrobat 7.0 and not 8.0). I wish pdfs were less popular or less annoying.

Pulling teeth and getting them to let me have a free pdf maker is sounding like the way to go, though. Thanks!

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I can understand that pain. I finally got it on my work machine a couple weeks ago. I requested it a couple years ago.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Programs such as pdf995 let you "print" from any application to a pdf file. You could choose the page to print from the original document and send it to the pdf-maker to make a new single-page pdf.

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what I would suggest, having investigated further. 7.0 will let you print individual pages (select the page in the "pages" tab off to the left") to a new PDF.

[rowyn]

Thanks! I'd hoped to get out of this without having to get any new software installed (it's for work and I'm not allowed to install jack squat on my work PC on my own), but I guess fishing one page out of a PDF is too complicated a task to ask of Reader. O_o

Software

[(Anonymous)]

I know you've stated before that you can't install software yourself :X Darn IT eh? Here's the software we actually use at my office, since I'm the IT guy I get to install it :)

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
The license is free for pretty much all uses, the only caveat is that you need to also install GhostScript, which is included as a link from that page.

-EricS

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I have Adobe Acrobat (not merely reader), so I can dissect a PDF ... but in order for me to help, you'd have to send it to me, and I'm guessing this is too ginormous to do that.

If you have Adobe Illustrator, you can load a single page from a PDF, and then re-save it as a PDF.

If you have Adobe Photoshop (or Adobe Photoshop Elements), you can open a single page from a PDF and save it in any number of formats (though you will need to choose the resolution, and you'll only be saving the output as an image, thus losing any editing capability on the document).

[rowyn]

Yeah, this is a task for work: a couple of times a week someone will want a page or two from one of approximately a gajillion .pdfs we've got, archived each of which invariably contain much more junk than the requester wants. So I can't use any programs that cost money because my work computer doesn't have a license for them. This silly task aside, I don't do much with pdfs, so buying a program would be excessive.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

There are multiple ways to accomplish this.

Method One: Get a splitter:

Here's a shareware splitter.

Here's one with a free trial, then $49.

Method Two is a bit more "techie":

Create a new printer, and check the "print to file" attribute. Then print a single page of your PDF to that printer; it will ask for the file name. That file can be sent to the customer, but will only print on some printers as it's already been "translated". However, you can often set up Microsoft outputs (more generic) to act as a printer, though it's a bit tricky. Let me know if you want to pursue this.

Method Three is brute force:

Most printer/scanners (now in the $100-$300 range) come with scan-to-PDF capability. Print the page you want, then scan it back into a different PDF -- then email that.

I actually use this method myself; I've probably sent a couple of thousand pages of PDFs in the last year or two., My Canon MP830 does an excellent job; I've bought nearly identical machines for home, office, and a couple of traveling locations. Your workplace would benefit from this capability, I think.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

Printing stuff so it can be scanned makes my teeth hurt. >.<

I actually have an option slightly better than this: I can do a virtual print to our electronic document storage system, and then email that file, but I was hoping for a quicker and more elegant system. I think the "print to pdf-making program" sounds like the best option, if I can get IT to go along with it.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Printing stuff so it can be scanned makes my teeth hurt.

Understood -- and you're using Method One already, or at least a variant of it.

The only benefit of the last option is that you can also include other documents that are not available electronically.

===|==============/ Level Head

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Oooh, new thought. If you have a new enough printer. You may be able to print to a message store on the printer, then have the printer send it back to you as a pdf. This works quite well on the canon imagerunner line of multifunction devices. Wit hthe newer ones I could even log into the printer's internal webpage to tell it to e-mail me the pdf.