2005-09-27

Printing only a portion of a pdf from Acrobat Reader

Adobe Acrobat Reader (verified on versions 6, 7, 8 & 9) tips for printing a portion of a pdf page.

Typically, if I only wanted to print a portion of a page, I would use the 'Snapshot' tool to capture an image of the desired area and paste it into another program for printing (such as photo editor or a word processor).


But! did you know that you can use the 'Snapshot' tool (under Tools > Select and Zoom) to capture part of the page then, when you pull up the print dialog, you will see under the 'Print Range' group, the option for 'Selected Graphic' (not normally available in the dialog box). 


You can then choose 'None' for 'Page Scaling' or expand the selection to 'Fit to Paper', depending on your needs.

This does NOT work for the 'Select Text' tool.

Also, from Adobe Standard 6 Help:
To convert each image in an Adobe PDF document to an image file format:

1. Choose Advanced & Export All Images.
2. In the Export All Images As dialog box, choose the image type for Save as Type (Windows) or Format (Mac OS).By default, the source filename is used as the filename with the image file type appended.
3. Click Settings.
4. In the Save As Settings dialog box, select the conversion, color management, and file settings for the file type. (See Converting to JPEG or JPEG2000 format, Converting to PNG format, and Converting to TIFF format.)
5. For Exclude Images Smaller Than, select the smallest size of image to be extracted. Select No Limit to extract all images.
6. Click OK, and in the 'Export All Images As' dialog box, click 'Save' or 'OK'.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

About printing a portion of a PDF...yay! I didn't know it was possible, and it drives me nuts to print a whole sheet for just one tiny part...very nice. :-)

Mistress of the Dorkness said...

kate m,
Glad you found the tip useful! I had to share that with a couple people in my company and thought others might benefit from it, as well. :)