PDF converter for thesis chapters

kiweemc

Hey all

I'm currently writing my PhD thesis and at the moment all my chapters are in MS word documents. I'm wondering does anyone know of a free PDF writer that will convert my word documents into PDF files?

Also, what are people's experience with merging PDFs, I reckon it will be safer than merging word documents...the thoughts of everything moving around frightens me!!!

Any advice appreciated.

Dr Strange

kiweemc wrote: »

Hey all

I'm currently writing my PhD thesis and at the moment all my chapters are in MS word documents. I'm wondering does anyone know of a free PDF writer that will convert my word documents into PDF files?

Also, what are people's experience with merging PDFs, I reckon it will be safer than merging word documents...the thoughts of everything moving around frightens me!!!

Any advice appreciated.

If you open your word files in the most recent Word there should be possibilities of saving as PDF automatically. If not try CutePDF:

http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp

As for merging, I found a really good programme here:

http://messiahpsychoanalyst.org/Documents/Downloads.html

(Don't worry about the strange url, it's clean and really works well) Here's some description:

http://codesforus.blogspot.com/2011/01/dysprosium-messiahs-codes-for-us-pdf.html

It's not only free but you can arrange your chapters if they are saved as individual pdf files and merge them in one document. I did that to my thesis and it worked perfectly! It also let's you rotate pdf documents as well as delete/insert pages as far as I know (only used the merge and rotate functions before).

kiweemc

Thanks for that info Preusse. Will try it out!

dambarude

What version of Word have you? If you have Word 2007 or Word 2010 you can do it by clicking 'Save As' and then 'PDF'. It's quicker and easier than uploading to websites.

chris85

dambarude wrote: »

What version of Word have you? If you have Word 2007 or Word 2010 you can do it by clicking 'Save As' and then 'PDF'. It's quicker and easier than uploading to websites.

+1

This is very handy to be honest. I always use it.

stinkle

chris85 wrote: »

+1

This is very handy to be honest. I always use it.

That's what I did for my recent thesis too. OP, not sure what field yours was in, but mice was science-based with lots of graphs/diagrams/images so here's what I did:

1. Merged all text documents in Word (I had to do this for my bibliography and table of contents).

2. Saved this as one file, then re-saved as a pdf.

3. My graphs etc were all saved in powerpoint. I had one document per chapter. I re-saved these as pdfs too.

4. I went on to foxyutils.com, where I could upload all my pdfs. I ended up splitting my text document at the points where I wanted to insert the graphs, then merged it all together at the end, using this site. Once I was happy with that I printed and it didnt take long to print out. Since everything was one big document there was minimal faffing around with collating!

Hope that helps. Btw, I'm not the most techno-savvy person, but this worked for me. I found the website grand, but if anyone knows it to be dodgy then say so

chris85

stinkle wrote: »

That's what I did for my recent thesis too. OP, not sure what field yours was in, but mice was science-based with lots of graphs/diagrams/images so here's what I did:

1. Merged all text documents in Word (I had to do this for my bibliography and table of contents).

2. Saved this as one file, then re-saved as a pdf.

3. My graphs etc were all saved in powerpoint. I had one document per chapter. I re-saved these as pdfs too.

4. I went on to foxyutils.com, where I could upload all my pdfs. I ended up splitting my text document at the points where I wanted to insert the graphs, then merged it all together at the end, using this site. Once I was happy with that I printed and it didnt take long to print out. Since everything was one big document there was minimal faffing around with collating!

Hope that helps. Btw, I'm not the most techno-savvy person, but this worked for me. I found the website grand, but if anyone knows it to be dodgy then say so

Would you not just put in the graphs and images into the word document and then save as a PDF. Important at this point to note that graphs should be pasted as images rather than regular paste, as sometimes the regular paste formatting just goes mad by itself.

I am science based also. Havent got my thesis title yet but this is how i work for assignments which can be long enough. If It was purely text based I would just stick to word and regularly save back up word docs and then create a PDF at the end for submission.

stinkle

chris85 wrote: »

Would you not just put in the graphs and images into the word document and then save as a PDF. Important at this point to note that graphs should be pasted as images rather than regular paste, as sometimes the regular paste formatting just goes mad by itself.

I am science based also. Havent got my thesis title yet but this is how i work for assignments which can be long enough. If It was purely text based I would just stick to word and regularly save back up word docs and then create a PDF at the end for submission.

I began using Word alright and didn't really want to use PowerPoint (already had a rake of graphs in Word format), but it was a right pain adding my graphs in, not sure if the prob was my data package or Word or not, but it was very hard to move them around and align with margins and fig legends etc. This became very frustrating when supervisors kept telling me to change little things, but the whole document would go mental.

I used Prism and it has "export to Word" and "export to PowerPoint" options, for some reason it was much MUCH easier and user friendly to put them in PowerPoint. I see what you mean though, it would have been so much handier to have a big word document at the end, you have to be very careful with section breaks and page number consistency using my mega-merge method! But it can be done

CiaraKane

anyone know how much it would cost to get someone to format a thesis? Is it by the page or hour and what costs - not for editing or proofing, just fixing layout of headings, tables and content pages etc.