This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs. Specific features vary by program.
This Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in for 2007 Microsoft Office programs supplements and is subject to the license terms for the Microsoft 2007 Office system beta software. You may not use this supplement if you do not have a license for the software.
DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS
WHY PDF?
PDF or Adobe Acrobat document format is a standard for printing visually accurate & more importantly, traditionally "read only" documents that can be somewhat protected from modification by lay-computer users. Being able to create documentation in this format is important for many folks.
Adobe however as of late has had a cow about us providing people with the ability to create .PDF documents within Office. While there are numerous tools that provide this capability (including competing Office suites such as OpenOffice), Adobe seems to have a problem with Microsoft providing this functionality out of the box. During Office 2007 Beta 2, we released "Save as PDF or XPS" as a built in feature but because of Adobe’s huffing, we’ve decided to make it available as a "free download".
Adobe still has a problem with this approach, primarily because Adobe makes money on selling $70 copies of Acrobat to corporate customers and if a PDF generator is available from a trusted and supported vendor (instead of an open source outfit or a flyby night small ISV) there’s serious chance that many people won’t buy Adobe Acrobat. Most people just need it to create initial .PDF files anyway. Apparently our customers don’t have any problem with the inclusion of "Save as PDF" in Office 2007: I’ve heard nothing but great comments about the feature’s availability.
Here’s a discussion of the topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/06…
BTW: For more on XPS, check out http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx.
There are also a variety of "blogs" written by Windows Digital Document team members including:
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 