How to create or split a PDF

Objective Build accepts Portable Document Format (PDF) files. You can create PDFs from most common applications.

Create a PDF

Many applications include an option to save a file as a PDF.

  • Microsoft Word or Excel: select File | Save As and set the output file type to PDF.

  • Google Docs: select File | Download | PDF document (.pdf).

  • Objective Trapeze: select File | Print.

Mac users can also save documents as PDF using File | Print | Save as PDF.

You can also use online conversion websites such as Adobe Acrobat PDF converter and Convertio.co to convert from common file formats to PDF, but do ensure that any site you use is fully compliant with appropriate data protection regulations.

Split a PDF

In many applications you can also print a subset of pages to PDF. This includes opening a PDF in your system's PDF viewer, such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome web browsers, or in Adobe Acrobat Reader. This means you can split an existing PDF.

  1. Select File | Print to open the Print dialog.

  2. Set Printer to Microsoft Print to PDF or a similar PDF printer driver.

  3. Select the pages to include:

    • Microsoft: Set Settings to Print All Pages, Print Current Page or Custom Print to select a subset of pages.

    • Google: Set Pages to All or Custom to select a subset of pages.

    • Adobe Acrobat: Set Pages to Print to All, Current or Pages to select a subset of pages.

  4. Select Print.

Extract PDF pages

You can extract a subset of pages from a PDF using tools like Objective Trapeze, Adobe Extract or PDFgear.

If you use Microsoft Word (Word 2013 onwards), you can open PDF directly in Microsoft Word, edit content and then save out all or part of the file again to PDF. This works for text-based documents without complex formatting.