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Working with Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF)

Online volunteers can help nonprofits convert and upload PDF files with the help of these tools:

  • The full version of Adobe Acrobat allows you to create a PDF file. Support for Acrobat may be found at the Adobe Web site.

  • goBCL is a free online tool that allows users to convert files to PDF.

  • For the Mac, there is a very inexpensive shareware program called PrintToPDF available that works very well in converting most files to PDF format.

When including links to PDF documents on a Web site, it is helpful to offer the following links for users who may not have worked with PDF files before:

  • To view Adobe Acrobat PDF files, you need to have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. The software is free, and may be downloaded from the Acrobat download page.

  • Users relying upon screen readers may wish to download the free accessible version of Acrobat. Please note that not every PDF will work with this plug-in, as some files may have been created prior to the development of this feature. Complete information about accessible Adobe products may be found at access.adobe.com.