If you’ve ever worked with PDFs, you’ve probably heard of Adobe Acrobat and Reader. And if you’ve heard of those products, you probably also know two other things. One, that Adobe products are the best for working with PDFs, and two, that Adobe software is very expensive. Both of these things are very true. However, if you are a working professional who generates a lot of digital paperwork, it’s going to be hard to recommend anything else but Adobe Acrobat.
But what if you’re a student who maybe generates a PDF here and there, but you don’t need anything too fancy, and you don’t want a product that’s going to break the bank?
PrintFriendly is a free PDF maker that operates as a Google Chrome extension. The app has been around since 2009 and has over a million current users, with a 4.3 rating from the chrome web store, so this isn’t exactly a scrappy new contender we’re looking at here today.
Using the app is easy. Once you have PrintFriendly installed, navigate to the page you want to convert, click on the extensions bar on the top right of your browser window, and select “PrintFriendly”. This is especially helpful for students or researchers who either can’t or don’t use Edge’s read aloud feature and would like a potential alternative.
From here, you can edit or export your document. Lines and paragraphs can be individually selected and deleted, allowing the user to focus on the parts that matter. You can increase or decrease the text size (70%-130%) as well as decrease the size of any pictures in the document. If you make a mistake deleting a line, the undo button will undo your previous actions.
After that, you’re ready to export. From the top left of your PDF preview screen, you’ll see Print, PDF, and Email. The Print option will send the document directly to a printer, the PDF option will prep the document for download as a .pdf, and the email option will email the document directly to you.
Overall, the app is very straightforward and simple to use, and it does a lot considering it is free. To learn more about PrintFriendly, click here (new window).
