10 Tips for Using the PDF Menu in the Print Dialog

There are lots of ways to use the PDF button that is hidden in the Print Dialog of most apps. You can use it to print part of a document or page, export as an image, send directly to Mail and much more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some tips for using the PDF Menu in the Print Dialogue. 
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So as a Mac user you probably already know about the PDF Menu in the Print Dialogue. Basically when you're in almost any app, any app that can print anyway, you can go to File, Print or Command P and then you get the Print Dialogue. In there you get this menu at the bottom that says PDF. If you click on the arrow on the right side of that menu you get a variety of different options including Save As PDF. This allows you to create a PDF from almost anything. If you can print from the app you can create a PDF from it because this is a function of the system, not the app itself. So an app doesn't need to have Export As PDF as an option to create a PDF 
Here's one example where you may want to use it. There is no Export As PDF in the Maps App. So what if you want to create a PDF from this? Well, you could go to Print, and then from here you can click there and choose Save As PDF and Save this out as a PDF version of that map. But even if the app has an Export As PDF menu command the Print As PDF menu gives you more options. Let me show you.
So my first tip is that you don't need to actually click on the Menu and choose Save As PDF. This is actually kind of an unusual element here as it is both a Menu and a Button. The left side here is a button. Just click where it says PDF and it will instantly jump to the Save As PDF function.  So now you can go right to actually naming the file and choosing a location. 
Now Pages is one of those apps that actually has, in the File Menu, an Export To PDF option. But if you choose it your options are basically just to export the entire thing as a PDF. You can change Quality and a few other things but you're exporting the entire thing. Using Print you can use all of the different Print options you've got here. So you can choose a range of pages, you can choose a selection of pages so just maybe two out of the three, and when you click the PDF button you are choosing a item from the menu and you're only going to get those pages. But you can use all the other options as well. So all these other options here. For instance for Layout, for Watermarking, for some of the specific options for the app. Those are all taken into account as well. So, for instance, I can do Pages per Sheet and choose 2 and you can see this is how it would print. This is also how it would save out as a PDF. So you can see this is my PDF that I get there just like if it was a printed page. 
Now another great thing you can do with that menu is instead of just clicking PDF or Save As PDF you can Open In Preview. This gives you the ability to see it as a PDF in Preview but you haven't saved it anywhere yet. You can see Command S is still Save. This is not saved anywhere. So you can take a look at the PDF and if there is something you want to change you could just close it and go back to Pages and make the changes and then do it again without having to constantly Save and then Delete a file. 
But the other thing you can do here is you can actually just Print this way. So I've opened it up in Preview and it's a PDF now. So this is just a temporary PDF that is not saved anywhere. Notice I get a special Print button at the bottom right hand corner. I can click on that to actually go and Print it. So while you do get a Preview in the Print Dialogue you get a more detailed Preview that you can easily zoom-in, exam things closely, jump around in, before you Print. You don't have to use that Print button there. You could actually go to File, Print or Command P and then you get another Print Dialogue and another Print button. But here you could actually change some of the options before printing out without actually changing those options in the original app that you were using. 
Now what if you just want to print an area. This is a common thing that people want to do in, say, Numbers. But this will work in any app as long as you can Print. So I'm going to do Command P to print here. In Numbers you've got this additional Preview step. I'll just go right to Print and let's say I only want to print this chart right here. Well, I can use the PDF menu. Open it in Preview and now I see what I'm going to print. But if I go to the Markup Tools by clicking the Markup Tools button, click Selection, select an area and then I do Command C to copy and Command N which is New From Clipboard, I get a little PDF here, not yet saved, that is just that area. So from here I could go to Print again and just print that area or I can Save and then save just this PDF of just this section here. Or if I go back a step to right after I select it, I could Copy and then go to another app and Paste it in the selection here as an individual element. This whole time without actually having saved any file that I later need to get rid of. 
Another time I may want to use that is to just Print or Save as PDF a portion of a webpage. So I can Command P to print here and then choose Open in Preview and now I can select just the portion of the webpage that I actually wanted using the Markup Tools and then Command C to copy, Command N for new, and I've got my new little section of the printout. Something I couldn't easily do directly from Safari. 
Also, when you Print and then use Open in Preview you've got all of the Markup Tools here. So you could draw, you could add shapes, you could add Notes, all sorts of things and then from here you could Share or Save. So you could have an annotated version of your document without changing the original one. 
Now saving as a PDF is great but what if you want to save out the document as an image. Well, you can start by going to Print and then Open in Preview. Now once you're in Preview one of the things you can do is you can Export. One of the Export options is to save as a JPEG or another image format. If you want you could use the previous idea of selecting just a section, Command C, Command N, and then export that as an image. 
Now one request I often get  is how can you use Keyboard Shortcuts to do all of this because if you do Command P to print you need to use your mouse or trackpad and the pointer and go down here and either click the PDF button or click the Menu and select an item. Well, one thing, of course, you can do is if the app does actually have an Export to PDF option you can setup a Keyboard Shortcut for that. Just go into System Settings, go to Keyboard, go to Keyboard Shortcuts, go to App Shortcuts, Create a new Shortcut perhaps just for that application like Pages. Use the exact menu title PDF and then 3 dots and then set the Keyboard Shortcut, let's say all the modifier keys and P and then Done and now when I go to Pages here I can Export to PDF is actually that keyboard shortcut and I can get right to that functionality. But that doesn't get you to Print and use this menu here. What will get you there is using the Tab Key. 
But first go back to System Settings and under Keyboard again make sure you have Keyboard Navigation turned On. If you don't have it turned On then using the Tab key is just going to go between these three fields here. But with it turned On you can Tab to all the buttons as well. Now you can keep tabbing all the way through until eventually you get to the Menu there. But since this is near the end it is better to use Shift Tab and go backwards. You go to Print, then Cancel, then PDF. 
Now since this is an unusual dual element here of a button and a menu it is just going to go to the button. But you can use then the right arrow key to go to the menu and then the down arrow key to go into that menu and then you can select a menu item from here like Open in Preview, Return, and then do it all from the keyboard. It does take a few key presses to do this but you can do it all with the keyboard. 
Now note there are some other options here in addition to Open In Preview and Save As PDF. You've got Save as Postscript probably something you don't need. But you also have Save To iCloud Drive which will create a PDF and just Save it. Save to a special folder called Web Receipts. You may or may not see that there. Send In Mail. Send In Mail is particularly interesting because it will create a PDF and you can see how it attaches it to a new email message ready to send. 
But how about this Edit Menu option here. You select that you see something called Printing Workflows and you can click the plus button to add one but it is unclear as exactly what you would be adding here. So what this actually does is it will add new things to this List here like the ability to Save to a specific folder. How do you create those? Well, you have to run Automator on your Mac. You can't do this in the newer Shortcuts App. It has to be Automator. One of the options here when you create a new document is a Print Plugin. That's the one you want to select. You select Choose and then you just want to search the Library of Actions here for Move. Select Move Finder Items. Then set the location. So let's just use Desktop. You can choose Other and choose any folder you want. Then we're going to use this. We're going to Save it and we're going to call this Save to Desktop. Save. Now you may not see it in the menu at first. If so, choose Edit Menu first and now you'll see it there. Now I can select Save to Desktop. You can see absolutely no more action was needed on my part. Yet there is the document. Back in Automator here you could also use Rename and you can put rename before this. You don't need to save a copy of it here because we're renaming something that is brand new. You can have a whole specification for how the file should be named. Although in most cases the default name, like in this case Alice.pages.pdf was perfectly fine. 
So there are a whole bunch of tips for using that special PDF Menu in the Print Dialogue. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “10 Tips for Using the PDF Menu in the Print Dialog”

John Russell

1 year ago

The Save to Web Receipts feature has saved my bacon more than once. Of course saving receipts is a good thing for remembering what you've spent, receipts for third-party apps often contain serial numbers for the software. Very helpful when you need to prove yourself to the software provider.

Ray

Gary, Thanks.

Larry Roberts

Thank you for the added in depth knowledge. I thought I knew my Mac, but you keep showing me the power built in. Loving my Mac more and more. I do have to use both Windows and Mac and find that I have to buy apps for windows to do what the native Mac OS can do. I really appreciate the power of the Preview app and print to PDF.

Dan

Gary, Many Thanks. Exactly (and much more) what I was looking for.

Gerry

Great productivity tips Gary, thanks. I find it better to define a keyboard shortcut Command-P to Save as PDF… for all apps. With that, all I need to do to create a PDF is hit Command-P twice. Really sweet.

Comments Closed.

10 Tips for Using the PDF Menu in the Print Dialog

Comments: 5 Responses to “10 Tips for Using the PDF Menu in the Print Dialog”

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