Adobe Acrobat is the commercial software which is primarily used for creating PDF files. However there are Free PDF creators available which can be used to create PDF documents without Adobe Acrobat. Apart from this we will also check few additional PDF utilities –

1) doPDF

doPDFA small and easy to use PDF file creator. It installs as a virtual Printer on your computer.

So whenever you need to convert any document to PDF, simply click on Print option and select doPDF from the available Printers list. Gives you option to select different quality of PDF files. It allows you to generate good quality PDF files without much effort.

2) Bullzip Another free PDF creator which installs as a Printer in you system. Allows to password protect your pdf files. This works almost same as doPDF and allows you to create PDF files without Adobe Acrobat.

3) Microsoft Office –  Microsoft has realized the need of PDF file creation. So after Office 2007 Microsoft has started to support PDF file creation directly from its Office suit.

For MS Office 2007 there is a plugin available which can be installed and after this when you do ‘Save As’ option in File menu, you get PDF format listed in supported file formats.

MS Office 2010 and later versions have inbuilt functionality for saving any Word, Excel file as PDF file and you do not need any additional plugin. All you have to do is to, go to File tab > click Save As and in Save as type list, click PDF (*.pdf).

3) Additional PDF Utilities – These few tiny utilities which provide us additional required functionality – PDFTools (provides Encrypt a PDF, Join PDF Files, Stamp PDF, Split PDF etc), i2pdf (image to pdf), Diffpdf (Compare PDF Files).

All these are great free tools for creating and manipulating PDF files without need to purchasing Adobe Acrobat.