Did you know that in Microsoft Office 2007 for PC and in Word 2008 for Mac you can save your Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation as a PDF? Just follow the simple steps below to use this new feature:

On a PC Computer running Windows with Microsoft Word 2007:

1. Open your Microsoft Word document.
2. Click the 'Microsoft Office' button.
3. Select the 'Save As' button, click 'Save as PDF or XPS'. (The 'Publish as PDF or XPS' dialog box appears.)
4. From the 'Save as Type' drop-down list, select 'PDF'.
5. In the 'Optimize for' group, select the appropriate option.
6. Click the 'Publish' button. (A new PDF file is created.)

On an Apple Computer running Mac OS X with Microsoft Word 2008:

1. Open your Word document.
2. Select the 'File' menu.
3. Select 'Save as…".
4. Enter a name for your file in the 'Save As' box or leave it as is.
5. Select the location to save the file.
6. In the 'Format' box select 'PDF' as the file type.
7. Click on Save… (A new PDF file is created.)

These instructions are similar for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

This feature is available to all users of Office 2007 on PC and Office 2008 on a Mac. You do not need Adobe Acrobat Professional to create a simple PDF. However, if you wish to create fill-in PDF forms you will need Acrobat Professional for that.

So what is a PDF?

"Short for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's monitor or printer as they were intended. To view a file in PDF format, you need Adobe Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems." (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/PDF.html) All UWS campus owned computers have the Adobe Acrobat reader installed on them.

Essentially, a PDF allows you to share a document that you have created without having to worry about how the recipient's computer software is configured. In essence, it locks the format of the document so that things like font and paragraph settings stay the same across