Converting web pages or web site in Internet Explorer (Windows) to PDF files

This applies to a single web page or the entire website to convert or download to the PDF files. You can even specify the depth of the link penetration. This discussion is based on Adobe PDF Creator tool. Please, visit Adobe website for details.

Acrobat adds the Adobe PDF toolbar and Convert Current Web Page To An Adobe PDF File button to Internet Explorer 5.01 and later, which allow you to convert the currently displayed web page to an Adobe PDF file, or convert and perform an activity in one easy operation. You can convert more than one web page, even an entire website, to an Adobe PDF file directly within Adobe Acrobat.

The Internet Explorer Adobe PDF toolbar preferences determine only whether converted files open in Acrobat automatically, and whether you are prompted to confirm the deletion of files or addition of pages to an existing PDF file. The Acrobat web page conversion settings, which are available only in Acrobat, let you set more advanced settings, including the creation of bookmarks and tags. After you set the Acrobat web page conversion settings as desired, you need to use the Create PDF From Web Page feature in Acrobat at least once before the settings take effect in the Internet Explorer web page conversion feature. (See Specifying conversion settings for capturing web pages.)

When you convert a web page, you can also choose to do one of the following activities using a menu command:

> Add the converted web page to an existing PDF file.
> Print the page. A converted web page is reformatted to a standard page size with logical page breaks. This avoids inconsistent results in printing directly from a browser window.
> Email the page. Automatically open your email application with the converted web page attached.
> Initiate an email-based review. When you send an Adobe PDF document by email for review, reviewers receive the document as an email attachment. Recipients can add their comments to it and then send their comments to you.
> Display the Adobe PDF pane in the Internet Explorer window. This provides a convenient place for managing converted web pages. Folders and PDF files are organized under the root folder Desktop. You can navigate files and create, rename, and delete folders in this window, as well as rename and delete files. Only PDF files and folders containing PDF files are listed. In Windows XP, if you don't see the button in Internet Explorer, choose View > Toolbars > Adobe PDF.
 

Note: The files and folders displayed in the Adobe PDF pane are the same files and folders stored on your system. Only PDF files appear in the Adobe PDF pane; if you attempt to delete a folder that contains other files (files that are not visible in the Adobe PDF pane), you are asked to confirm the deletion.

 

Creating Adobe PDF files from downloaded web pages

An Adobe PDF file created from HTML pages is like any other PDF file. You can download and convert web pages by specifying a URL, by opening web pages from a link in an Adobe PDF file, and by dragging and dropping a web link or HTML file onto an Acrobat window icon. The web pages are converted to PDF and opened in the document pane. You can navigate through the file and add comments and other enhancements to it. Any links on the pages are still active in the PDF file--just click a link to download and convert the linked web pages, and add them to the end of the PDF file.
 

Note the following when converting web pages:
> Before converting a web page to an Adobe PDF file, be sure that you can access the Internet.
> You can download HTML pages, JPEG and GIF images (including the last frame of animated GIF images), text files, and image maps.
> One web page may correspond to more than one PDF page because long HTML pages are divided into standard-size pages (depending on the PDF page layout settings).
> HTML pages can include tables, links, frames, background colors, text colors, and forms. Cascading stylesheets and Macromedia® Flash™ are supported. HTML links turn into links, and HTML forms turn into PDF forms.
> The default/index.html frame downloads only once.
> You can determine whether to reference digital media components by URL, not include them, or embed the files where possible.
> Depending on the options selected when downloading and converting web pages, an Adobe PDF file created from web pages can display special tagged bookmarks that retain web information, such as the URLs for all links on the pages. Use these tagged bookmarks to navigate, reorganize, add, or delete pages in your PDF file. You can also add more tagged bookmarks to represent paragraphs, images, table cells, and other items on the pages. For information on using these tagged bookmarks, see Extracting, moving, and copying pages and Deleting and replacing pages.
> To convert Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) language web pages to PDF on a roman (Western) system in Windows, you must have installed the CJK language support files while installing Acrobat. (Also, it is preferable to select an appropriate encoding from the HTML conversion settings.)

Note: In Windows, if you try to open a PDF file that uses double-byte fonts and you don't have the necessary fonts installed, Acrobat asks if you want to install the necessary fonts kit.