PDFwriter for Mac Reviews

This has not been updated since 2011 and does not seem to show up properly on recent versions of macOS. I know there is a workaround, but this should not be necessary. Therefore I tried the fork from rodyager on Github which is based on this project. It installs properly on macOS Catalina. Thus I would recommend using RWTS-PDFwriter which automatically adds the printer without requiring user configuration. Google: github rodyager RWTS-PDFwriter

I used MikePro2 's advice and it worked. I have a workaround for PDFwriter printing to folder you don't like. I use the Hazel app. It is quite easy to have Hazel monitor the folder, move all new files to a folder of your choosing and rename them according to your method and you don't have to do anything once it is set up. You can even have it tagged and you can monitor according to contents, my water bill gets tagged due and gets filed in the water bill folder. I actually have adobe acrobat, but I use PDFwriter for persnickety files that won't print the way I want.

I replace my user folder in /private/var/spool/pdfwriter (this is where the folder in /Users/Shared points) with a symbolic link to my Desktop folder so that jobs are printed directly to my desktop instead found in the Shared folder. This broke after upgrading to El Capitan with a sandboxd error that prevented the print driver from accessing my Desktop Folder. The solution is to add "Sandboxing Relaxed" to /etc/cups/cups-files.conf as detailed at tempel's blog entry "making-cups-printer-drivers-work-again.html" (URLs prohibited).

Found out I can't select the folder to create the PDF, then I followed the issues for the PPD file, then I did a print sample: 5 pages out of 29 in a 5.1MB file... created a 126MB file. This has been uninstalled.

Once you find your pdfs beneath /Users/Shared/PDFwriter you recognize that all files have a length of zero bytes. Then you dig through reviews to accidently find the information on how to specify the provided PPD file in order to make the software fly. Finally working, but horrible UX. (Tested on El Capitan.)

works for Mac OS El Capitan (10.11.6 ). As mentioned by mitcboo, "when adding the printer in preferences, instead of using the Generic Postscript Printer pick Other.. and navigate to /Library/Printers/Lisanet/PDFwriter/pdfwriter.ppd" The output is then generated with files bigger than 0 Bytes in following directory: /private/var/spool/pdfwriter It would be nice if you could change preferences like: - destination folder - after PDF-creation start an application with filepath as argument such an automator or similar If those will be available I will give 5 stars! :)

Works nicely once properly installed. A couple of issues: 1. It can be slow with longer documents - the partially-written pdf looks like a normal file in Finder, but it will show up as "damaged" if you try to open it before PDFwriter is done with it. Open the print queue to see if printing is complete. 2. The generated pdfs are very large - a 50-page document can be well over a gigabyte. For text-only documents, this can be fixed by opening the file with the ColorSync Utility application, and applying the Black & White filter. ("Reduce file size" leads to poor resolution.) PDF-shrinking services like smallpdf.com and pdfcompress.com are also very effective. 3. You have no control over the destination folder. I made an alias of it and put it in the dock.

Works well to create pdf from any application that can print and also keeps programs happy that require a printer when you don't have one to install. For those having problems after upgrading the OS version, you need to uninstall the pdf driver and then re-install. Could be made more user friendly by displaying the output folder in finder after a print rather than expecting the user to know where the files are located.

Those experiencing difficulties getting this to work in El Capitan might like to try RWTS PDFwriter (google github rwts pdfwriter). RWTS PDFwriter is closely based on Lisanet PDFwriter, but avoids the sandboxing restrictions on print drivers introduced in El Capitan, and also provides automatic configuration of the printer driver to simplify installation.

IMPORTANT UNDER 10.11.x : When adding the printer in preferences, instead of using the Generic Postscript Printer pick Other.. and navigate to /Library/Printers/Lisanet/PDFwriter/pdfwriter.ppd and select that. Works great to generate PDF from Windows programs under CrossOver.

Works fine here in 10.11 El Capitan, just used it to print a secure PDF form from Acrobat Pro so it could be opened in Preview. Installation does require an extra step beyond the instructions - "Lisanet PDFwriter" does not automatically appear as the printer software, you have to select the driver manually when you are setting up the new printer. Click on Use: Generic PostScript Printer, in that dropdown menu choose "Other..." and navigate to the ppd file at /Library/Printers/Lisanet/PDFwriter/PDFwriter.ppd

Easy to install, but no indication on first use of where destination output files are going to be written - I thought initially, nothing at all had happened when I 'printed' my first output. I'd love this to work, but it simply doesn't. As for some other reviewers, I can't get PDF Writer to work on El Capitan - it writes only zero byte files, and you can't select either output file name or location. Limited response to support requests, and no indication in download source that it won't work at all in El Capitan (and maybe not even on Yosemite)

O Byte files! Well I got as far as a successful installation however when I print using the PDFWriter, I jet get a directory with 0-byte files in it.

Install is going well and a little bit strange that you can not change the default output directory. Then you get Sandbox Errors in OS X El Capitan, which result in empty .pdf files. In the log it says: [ERROR] error in creating pdf from input stream

I find the way to use PDFWriter on OSX 10.11 Juste you see that the Lisanet driver is not présent when you add printer... so you can add it manualy on the following path ! /Library/Printers/Lisanet/PDFwriter/PDFwriter.ppd It working fine now !!! thanks to me ;-)

confirm no longer works in 10.11 - the "Lisanet PDFWriter" options never appears in the 'use with' option during install.

confirm does NOT work on 10.11

It works!

This review based on OS X 10.10.5 installation. Package installed with no problem. Documentation for adding PDFwriter as a printer was OK. As others have noted, PDFwriter alias was broken. A few minutes was spent trying to track down the original folder to no avail. The decision was made to give PDFwriter a try to see what would happen. As it turns out, the user is able to choose a name and destination for the PDFwriter output. Nice. PDFwriter produced the required PDF. So, PDFwriter works well. However, the documentation is poor for OS X 10.10. There is no need to sweat the broken alias as it appears to be irrelevant for the given operating system.

Downloaded PDFwriter for Mac, ran it once, and like so many others could not locate the file created. After some web searching, I found the rather obscure destination folder, which is not described in the documentation. The solution is: PDFwriter installs a shortcut to printed files. You can find it at: <boot folder>/Users/Shared/PDFwriter You can also use Terminal app. Just paste the following command (then hit enter): open /private/var/spool/pdfwriter/ Now, it is a complete app and useful. Suggest better documentation within the app as it runs, or better yet, a choice of destination folder. Otherwise, happy to have this tool in my toolbox.

Worked perfectly for me. Adobe Reader selfishly prevented me from saving a form to PDF; this solved the problem.

Needs to be updated! I'm getting zero bytes after the Yosemite install..

running 10.8.5 on iMac 3.06 GHz Core 2 with 12 GB RAM doesn't work for me - acts like it's working - at end all I find is broken alias to PDFWriter folder

Unfortunately, the only thing I can verify is that it behaves as a real printer from an OS interaction perspective including code interaction which is important to me. However, at least under Mac OS X 10.10.1 i.e. Yosemite I cannot find the pdf files in the stated location provided by the readme e.g. Users/Shared/PdfWriter , all I find there is a broken alias

Good tool. We have an editable PDF that we edit prior to sending to clients. However, with our Mac users, we weren't able to save the edited version as an uneditable PDF. This tool allowed us to do that. The only drawback to this is that after we printed to PDFWriter, it rotated each page vertically although the content was in landscape mode. If anyone has a solution to keep the pages in landscape mode to be able to read as is when it opens that would be great, otherwise I'll have to go the long way and open through preview to edit and then save as PDF. Not a ton of extra time, but an extra step I was hoping to avoid.