With a smorgasbord of mobile devices at our fingertips, having documents that work on the majority of them is a challenge for any horsebiz owner. The Portable Document Format or PDF file is among the best options, and it’s something you can embrace for everything from sharing content on your website and social media outlets to putting together resources for customers.
Since mobile use is on the upswing and the ‘I need it now’ mindset is everywhere, the handy-dandy PDF can be a trusty sidekick when it comes to sharing your information. Here are several ways to create and send PDFs on the go, using your own mobile device.
This 52 Fridays article about PDFs, A Pretty Darn Functional (PDF) Way To Market Your Horsebiz, received good feedback from loyal readers, who appreciated the clear explanation of what a PDF is and how it can be used in a marketing capacity. Because the PDF is a standard format, it’s pretty consistent no matter what type of device or operating system you have.
While creating a PDF on your computer has been possible for ages, there are now a number of options for creating PDFs using your mobile device’s built-in camera lens. Why would you want to do this? Here are a few situations that come to mind:
- Making copies of signed business contracts, legal documents, receipts, or business cards when a photocopier just isn’t available
- Scanning and emailing a magazine article or other clipping to a contact with a ‘thought of you’ message
- Storing scanned versions of new client forms on your phone, so you can email them immediately, without waiting until you get back to the office
Adobe is the creator of the PDF format and the Adobe Reader that allows free reading access of PDF documents. Their Adobe Reader X is the mobile version of the Reader, and now they’ve got CreatePDF for both iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android devices; it’s available for $9.99 at their website.
Foxit PDF Creator for Android: Suitable for Android 2.2 and later devices, this app allows you to create PDFs from Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) as well as image and text formats such as JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TXT. It’s $4.99 from either Google’s Android Market or Amazon’s Appstore for Android.
This article on eHow.com explains how to scan documents using a smartphone, and suggests additional apps like Scan2PDF, JotNot, DocScanner, and ScannerPro. There are some good tips at the end of the article about the scanning process, so be sure to scroll down to the end.
Have you used any of these PDF creators? Can you think of other uses for them? Share your thoughts or ideas using the Comments box below.
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