Beyond that, also, what’s so hard about clicking on “File > Export As… > PDF” which is literally in the file menu on LibreOffice at the very least. I don’t know about MS Office, but I would assume it’s the same.
Output corruption sometimes persists across all different modes of printing/exporting. Some lines in Word starting to go vertical for no reason is one I encountered a lot, the other is Excel insisting on making every cell it’s own list, and it’s usually fixable only by force rebuilding the file container by saving as another doc/docx type, pushing Word to make it from the scratch and drop traces of accumulated file corruption. Funny enough, some of these bugs can’t be reproduced if opened in Libre, that made me prefer it, when applicable, a long time ago.
I was helping someone and both export and print to pdf each messed up different minute aspects of the design/layout. I don’t remember what exactly it was tho sorrx
Print to pdf generally loses the text and just makes it an image though. Which can balloon size and prevent ctrl+f without running ocr on it and saving an additional layer with more mistakes than the original.
I deliberately use the print as image feature if I don’t want someone to be able to select text or search the document (like if I’m sending something with sensitive info as an attachment to an email). Most of the time, I have that option disabled so the document can be searchable and text can be copied from it.
Gmail reads the images with OCR and adds it to search terms. Your steps are a noble effort to increase reverse engineering effort, however there are image to text desktop apps now so that effort on the receivers side is almost nothing these days.
Right…the idea isn’t to make it foolproof, it’s just to make a barrier. People generally go for easier targets over ones with a small barrier. If you have two bikes next to each other in public, one with a bike lock and one with no lock at all, the casual thief is way more likely to steal the one without a lock. Bike locks can easily be broken, but they serve as a deterrent.
I’m in my forties. The post we are talking about was made in February 2026. Priyanka Lakhara definitely looks younger than me, didn’t even make her Twitter account until January 2024.
What does age or how it worked in the past have to do with a post made… four days ago by someone who is either late twenties to mid-thirties at most?
Also, in those old timey wimey years I was just pirating Adobe Acrobat.
The age comment is not about the age of the posts, but about how you seem so surprised about printing as PDF rather than export as PDF.
Using a virtual printer was the norm until relatively recently, and even then it’s still the most effective because anything than can print can use that to generate a PDF.
Beyond that, also, what’s so hard about clicking on “File > Export As… > PDF” which is literally in the file menu on LibreOffice at the very least. I don’t know about MS Office, but I would assume it’s the same.
It can produce different results than print to pdf unfortunately
Could you expand on that, I’m curious because export to PDF has always worked flawlessly for me.
Depends on the application. Print to PDF always produces the output as seen on screen, though without things like fillable fields.
Unless you change print options of course, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish it can get really weird.
Output corruption sometimes persists across all different modes of printing/exporting. Some lines in Word starting to go vertical for no reason is one I encountered a lot, the other is Excel insisting on making every cell it’s own list, and it’s usually fixable only by force rebuilding the file container by saving as another doc/docx type, pushing Word to make it from the scratch and drop traces of accumulated file corruption. Funny enough, some of these bugs can’t be reproduced if opened in Libre, that made me prefer it, when applicable, a long time ago.
I was helping someone and both export and print to pdf each messed up different minute aspects of the design/layout. I don’t remember what exactly it was tho sorrx
Print to pdf generally loses the text and just makes it an image though. Which can balloon size and prevent ctrl+f without running ocr on it and saving an additional layer with more mistakes than the original.
Are you sure you don’t have “print as image” enabled there? It should keep it as a layered PDF, not rasterizing.
I probably did. Think I’ve had some things not print correctly without that on an actual printer so I turned that on sometimes?
I deliberately use the print as image feature if I don’t want someone to be able to select text or search the document (like if I’m sending something with sensitive info as an attachment to an email). Most of the time, I have that option disabled so the document can be searchable and text can be copied from it.
Gmail reads the images with OCR and adds it to search terms. Your steps are a noble effort to increase reverse engineering effort, however there are image to text desktop apps now so that effort on the receivers side is almost nothing these days.
fwiw its trivial to OCR it. single click in many pdf software.
but I guess it slows down some people
Right…the idea isn’t to make it foolproof, it’s just to make a barrier. People generally go for easier targets over ones with a small barrier. If you have two bikes next to each other in public, one with a bike lock and one with no lock at all, the casual thief is way more likely to steal the one without a lock. Bike locks can easily be broken, but they serve as a deterrent.
Well, but we’re not just talking about Office. What about browsers, document viewers, etc.
My browser saves PDFs fine?
How about notepad. Or paint.
I’m going to assume you’re on the younger side. That’s a relatively recent thing. For many many years we had to install PDF printers.
Also the PDF printer is generic, but the export has to implemented for each application individually.
CutePDF was the best.
https://cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp
Started out with it in XP.
Just reading that name made my articulations ache.
It’s great is still active though.
Still using it today whenever I need to flatten a PDF with my scanned signature.
Why do you need to flatten it?
I’m in my forties. The post we are talking about was made in February 2026. Priyanka Lakhara definitely looks younger than me, didn’t even make her Twitter account until January 2024.
What does age or how it worked in the past have to do with a post made… four days ago by someone who is either late twenties to mid-thirties at most?
Also, in those old timey wimey years I was just pirating Adobe Acrobat.
The age comment is not about the age of the posts, but about how you seem so surprised about printing as PDF rather than export as PDF.
Using a virtual printer was the norm until relatively recently, and even then it’s still the most effective because anything than can print can use that to generate a PDF.
That’s how I still create PDFs honestly.
Didn’t want you offend, sorry if came out wrong