PDF creator for Firefox?

October 7, 2009 9:57 AM

Looking for an add-on to Firefox that will allow me to save web pages as PDF documents

I have a bunch of emailed receipts that I need to save as PDF files for my accountant. I'm looking for some sort of add-on to Firefox that will allow me to save an email (via gmail) as a PDF.

I've tried this add-on, however, it's timing out when I try to use it.

My alternative is to print out these emails, scan them as PDFs and save them. This is more time consuming.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

posted by dfriedman to computers & internet (15 answers total)

How about this one?
posted by nitsuj at 9:59 AM on October 7, 2009

Hm? Why not just print them to a PDF file in the first place?

This is built into OS X, or use PDF Creator for Windows. (Or one of a dozen others.)
posted by rokusan at 10:00 AM on October 7, 2009

(I print all my airplane confirmations and sales receipts that way.)
posted by rokusan at 10:01 AM on October 7, 2009

Seconding PDF creator, which installs like a printer. Very useful.
posted by MustardTent at 10:02 AM on October 7, 2009

PDF Creator is potentially the answer, thanks. But I can't figure out where it's saving the PDFs too! Is there a setting somewhere in the software that allows me to specify a default directory?
posted by dfriedman at 10:21 AM on October 7, 2009

Thirding PDFCreator. It's not a FF plugin -- it's a print driver (that is, you now can create a PDF from nearly any source). After installing it, you'd just File-Print, but instead of sending the page to an actual printer, you'd send it to PDFCreator, which then pops up a "Save As" dialog.
posted by Doofus Magoo at 10:21 AM on October 7, 2009

Also, Print to PDF is a feature built into Firefox 3, but not shown without this extension.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:21 AM on October 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

i use bullzip myself.
posted by wayofthedodo at 10:24 AM on October 7, 2009

Another option is CutePDF Writer. I don't know if it's better then PDF Creator but it works fine for me.
posted by smackfu at 10:35 AM on October 7, 2009

dfriedman: PDF Creator is potentially the answer, thanks. But I can't figure out where it's saving the PDFs too! Is there a setting somewhere in the software that allows me to specify a default directory?

I don't think you're using it right – or you're just not going through the whole process. It goes like this:

Press 'Print' and the print dialog comes up. Select 'PDFCreator.'

After the 'printing' progress bar finishes, a dialog box that says 'PDFCreator 0.9.8' will come up. It doesn't say so (it should) but this is for selecting metadata, the information the PDF will contain about where it came from, when it was created, etc. Fill it in (or not) and click 'Save.'

Next, you'll get a 'Save File' dialog where you can select where you want to save the file.

Maybe you weren't going far enough to get to that last step. Anyhow, this is probably just academic at this point since filthy light thief has pointed out that Firefox has built-in print-to-PDF (which I didn't know - neat! Thanks, flt!) but I figured this should be here for posterity, or in case you ever want to use PDFCreator for something else.

posted by koeselitz at 11:03 AM on October 7, 2009

I hadn't known about Firefox's built-in "Print to PDF" option that filthy light thief linked to, and it is a great idea. However, I just tested it and ran into some problems - it's occasionally adding spaces between characters (such as "w w w" instead of "www"), resulting in some URLs not being clickable. It also appears to ignore "Page Setup" settings such as margins and headers and footers. Maybe this is why it's a hidden feature?

I'm using PrimoPDF to print to PDF, and it works admirably.
posted by oulipian at 11:48 AM on October 7, 2009

The extension is really basic, and once installed can be found under the File menu, between "Print Preview" and "Print"
posted by filthy light thief at 11:55 AM on October 7, 2009

The extension works for my purposes. But I don't need clickable URLs in the PDFs I want to create.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.
posted by dfriedman at 12:19 PM on October 7, 2009

I'll second CutePDF Writer, and when you install it, it will ask to install GhostScript. Make sure you do that.
posted by deezil at 12:20 PM on October 7, 2009

Seconding Bullzip. Hated CutePDF.
posted by tra at 12:22 PM on October 7, 2009