• You’re sending a document to someone – or publishing it on your website – and you don’t want the reader to be able to edit it;
• You’re not sure whether your reader has the same software package or version as you;
• Your “document” is actually a composite of various files created in various different applications;
• Your document is graphic-heavy and the file size is rather large.

Creating a PDF file is often seen as a bit of a black art, but if you’re a Windows user it can actually be very simple.  PDFCreator is a freeware application that installs as a printer.  When you want to create a PDF document, you “print” it to the PDF printer, which then allows you to save and/or e-mail the results.

PDFCreator can also queue up multiple files and then combine them together as a single PDF file, which can be useful in many instances.  For example, my invoices are created in Microsoft Word, but some clients require a second page of detail held in Excel.  PDFCreator allows me to put both sets of information together as a single file.

I’ve recommended PDFCreator to a couple of my clients.  One of them jokes that it’s the best thing I’ve ever helped her with.  She has a point: it’s lightweight, handy and easy to use.  It’s become an essential tool for me and was one of the first things that I installed on my new PC a couple of months ago.