If you are like most people you do most of your work in a word processing application such as Microsoft Word®.  As flexible as the Office suite of products are, there are some things you can’t do. For example, you can’t accurately publish directly to the web from a .doc, that is best done with an HTML file.  Also,  you can’t prevent people from printing, cutting and pasting the contents or editing the document directly. To protect your documents you are better off using a PDF File.  But editing directly in HTML is difficult, and tools for creating PDF files can be expensive.

Not anymore.  Click to Convert gives you the power to create HTML and PDF files directly from Microsoft Word® documents with a few clicks. Let’s explore a few of the reasons why it makes sense to do so.

When to create PDF files

We create Portable Document Format files, or PDF files, when we want documents to be easy to read, readily available, downloadable and accessible, but we don’t want to expose our word processing formatting to the world. Creating PDF files is a good idea if you want to ensure that documents remain intact and changes have not been made. Using a tool, such as Click to Convert, you can easily add security measures to ensure that documents are original and unchanged. 

For example, create a PDF from any kind of signed document and you can transmit it via electronic email with confidence, knowing that the recipient will not be able to alter the content. This is great for non-disclosure agreements, loans, bank documents, employment offers, acceptance letters and so on... you get the idea. But that is not the only reason to create PDFs. PDFs offer a smart easy-to-read format that is a highly portable and efficient format for sending and reading files electronically.

When to create HTML files

As most people know, Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML files are viewed through a web browser, but they don’t have to be internet files. You can create HTML files simply for internal distribution of large documents that you wish to make searchable and browsable so people can read through them quickly (without having to download the original) or find what they are looking for easily.  Because you can embed hyperlinks in HTML you can deliver a lot of information in a well organized fashion, allowing your readers to drill down into a hyperlink to find out more, or skim the high level information quickly.

You can create HTML documents and PDF documents from the same source document. This is useful if you want to put a download link on a web page. Create the source document in Word, use this as the editable original. With Click to Convert you can convert it to a PDF for downloading and to HTML for posting to your web page at the same time!

When its time to update the material or make changes, simply edit the Word document and reconvert.  Here is a screen shot of the Click to Convert application. Notice that you can choose to create just a PDF document, just an HTML document or both at once using the simple point and click interface. You can save these settings for later, or change back to your default settings at any time. Notice also that in the left hand window you have the opportunity to customize your output.

 
Click to Convert User Interface

Summing Up

Create PDF Files when:

• You want to protect a file’s contents.

• You want to transmit a signed document electronically.

• You want a highly readable document for mass distribution.

• You want to make a document available for download from an internet site.

Create HMTL Files when:

• You want to upload the contents directly to the internet or intranet.
• You want a highly browsable document in a well organized format.
• You want people to be able to choose between skimming the document and drilling down on certain information using hyperlinks.