Saving Reports, Receipts and Letters as PDF Files

Some users may wish to save reports, individual standard receipts (which are also really reports), and letters or receipts created with the Letters menu options, to PDF files. DONATION allows you to do that, so that those documents can be emailed to others in your organization, or the receipts' donors, as attachments.

To do this, for reports and individual standard receipts click the Save PDF button on the window, and for letters or receipts created with the Letters menu options, click the Save PDF toolbar icon (

), or use File à Save PDF. This will bring up a "Save PDF File As" dialog, in which you can both select a directory and specify a filename to save the PDF file as. Once you do that and click Save, it will take a moment to save the PDF, then display that PDF file for you in your standard PDF viewing application (usually the Adobe Reader).

Reports can also be saved to PDF with the Save As button, which gives you some additional options like emailing the PDF version of the report to someone after it is created.

All PDF receipts (but not letters or reports) created by DONATION are securely encrypted, with a password that prevents them from being modified in any way unless you know that password, which I do not give out! (You don't need a password to view the PDF files.) If you plan to email receipts as PDF attachments, please read the Help section on that for further concerns. (That section describes a way to email a batch of receipts, each to the relevant donor, which is not done using the methods described on this page.)

The way the Save PDF options work is that they use a "PDF Printer" that is installed with DONATION, called "novaPDF Pro v7 for DONATION". You can also select that printer to print to from other applications' Print dialog boxes (or even DONATION's normal Print dialog boxes). However, because the version installed with DONATION is only fully licensed for use with DONATION, it will print the following message at the bottom of every page, when you use it from other applications:

You created this PDF from an application that is not licensed to print to novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com)

This message should normally not appear if you use the Print button in DONATION to print reports, receipts or letters.

If you are finding the ability to print to PDF files from other applications helpful, you can indeed go to that novaPDF web site and purchase a full license to the software, so that you can use it from all applications on your computer that can print. As of early 2012, it has versions costing from $19.95 to $49.95.

There are a number other PDF Printer software products on the market as well. Here are a couple of these programs that I am aware of, with their prices as of early 2012:

1.	PDF995, from www.pdf995.com. This has a free version, which however brings up an advertising page for the program in your web browser every time you use it, or an advertising-free version for only $9.95.

2.	PDF-XChange, from www.docu-track.com. This has a Lite version, for $24, and a Standard version, for $44, which has many more features, including stronger integration with Microsoft Office.

If you have not purchased an individual license for the novaPDF printer driver, you may want to uninstall it, if you chose to uninstall DONATION. The DONATION uninstall program will prompt you as to whether to uninstall the novaPDF printer. If you answer No to that and still want to uninstall it later, you can do that via Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs (or Programs) tool, choosing to Uninstall "novaPDF Pro v7 for DONATION (novaPDF 7.1 printer)".