How do I Save As PDF from within Internet Explorer (IE9)?

How do I Save As PDF from within Internet Explorer (IE9)?

By Dave Taylor

The Question:I’ve watched my Mac friends blithely save Web pages as PDF documents so they can share them with colleagues and I want to be able to do the same from within Windows 7 on my PC. Is there a way I can “save as type PDF” or “save as pdf” or similar?

Dave’s Answer:

The answer is no, and yes. No because by default, the version of Internet Explorer 9 (aka MSIE9) that you download from Microsoft has no PDF capabilities built in, either to display PDF files or to create them. In fact, it seems like this capability was in some earlier versions but now it’s gone. On the other hand, depending on what Adobe PDF applications you install, you might find that with certain pages you can indeed go to File -> Save As Type and choose PDF.

But I also say “yes” because there are a number of third-party utilities that give you just the functionality you seek, through a variety of mechanisms. My favorite approach, however, is to simply install a “save to pdf” program as a printer driver. Then you can “print to pdf” any time you want to save a Web page in the widely portable PDF format.

Don’t worry, it’s not hard, though I bet you read “install a printer driver” and got a clutching feeling in your chest. 🙂

The PDF printer driver that a lot of people like and that is free and easy to work with is called PrimoPDF and you can install it from here: Install PrimoPDF.

The install sequence is pretty typical…


Ready to proceed? Click “Yes” to install PrimoPDF.



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This post is excerpted with permission from Dave Taylor.

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