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Creating PDFs with Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite Products

Creating Accessible PDFs

The best way to create accessible PDFs is to start with your native files. Use the following techniques to make native files as accessible as possible before creating PDFs.

  • Use headings and styles
  • Use true columns
  • Use tables to format your data instead of applying fonts and using tabs.

Be sure to select the "Enable Accessibility and Reflow" option from PDFMaker or, once the PDF is created, Adobe Acrobat's "Add Tags to Document" option can be used to further enhance accessibility by tagging the PDF for use in a screen reader.

Once you have configured your Acrobat settings to EERE standards, follow the guidelines below to create your PDFs. This is also available as a handy printable checklist (PDF 125 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

PC Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint

  • Select Adobe PDF as your printer
    • The Cancel button in the print dialog box changes to a Close button whenever you change a printer. Be sure to click Close after selecting Adobe PDF printer instead of OK or else the document will start to print through Adobe PDF printer instead of PDFMaker.
  • Select Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings

    • Settings Tab

      • Select StdWeb72, StdWeb150, or StdPrint
      • Select Prompt for Adobe PDF file name
      • Select Add links or Add bookmarks if desired
      • Select Enable Accessibility and Reflow with Tagged Adobe PDF
    • Security Tab - leave everything unchecked.
    • Word Tab - Select only options desired in resulting PDF. Selecting options that are not pertinent to your document unnecessarily slows PDF creation time.
    • Bookmarks Tab - If styles and headings were used in the document, select appropriate levels of automatic bookmark generation as desired.
    • Excel and PowerPoint - Slightly different tabs and options, select as appropriate
  • Click the PDFMaker Convert to Adobe PDF icon or select Adobe PDF >Convert to Adobe PDF.
  • Save the file.

PC or Mac Adobe Products

For Adobe Creative Suite (CS) products

  • Use the Save As PDF or Export features directly from the application to create PDFs
  • Create PDFs compatible with Acrobat 7 (PDF 1.6)
  • As a general guideline, use either 72dpi or 150dpi with automatic (jpeg) compression

PC All Other Applications

  • Select Adobe PDF as your printer.
  • Verify Adobe PDF Properties – Select StdWeb72, StdWeb150, or StdPrint
  • Click OK to print to Adobe PDF printer.
  • Enter desired file name and location when prompted.

Mac All Other Applications

  • Use the Adobe PDF printer to create PDFs from all other Mac applications.
  • Do NOT "Save as PDF" from Mac OS10x. This produces quartz-generated PDFs which have known compatibility issues with certain PC environments.