PDF Creation via web browser
A PDF file can be created by anyone with the necessary software which can be free. PDFs can be of two types. One type is the searchable PDF file where the text information is stored in a separate layer in the PDF. This allows for easy searching and highlighting of text.The other type of PDF version is strictly graphics based. This means that you can neither search for particular text nor can you highlight individual words or sentences in the PDF.
Recently I needed to create a searchable PDF file. The source of this PDF is 12 invoices from an online retailer with all 12 invoices in one PDF. I have done this in the past and its relatively easy using a PDF printer driver that is automatically installed with a variety of PDF readers. These PDF readers include FoxIT PDF reader, PDF X-Change, pdf Factory Pro etc. I have Chrome, Firefox and Opera all installed on my system. My default browser is Google Chrome on Windows 7 here although after this experience which resulted in some choice words being uttered, I may have to rethink what I will be using for a browser.
Frustration begins
I went to the online retailer’s website via Chrome and pulled up the invoice. Then used Chrome to print the invoice to one of the aforementioned PDF printers. I went through each one of the 12 invoices using this process. Once that was completed I told the PDF printer to create the PDF file from all 12 invoices that was sitting in its queue. Clicking on the PDF file opened it in FoxIT PDF reader and I tried to select a series of words and was met with failure. The resulting PDF file was a graphical based one rather than text. This meant I could not search the PDF file either. Drat. I thought that I had done something wrong. So I repeated the process this time with the commercial version of Nitro Pro PDF. Nope same result. So I tried Firefox x64 with the same process and multiple PDF printers all with the exact same result. Same with Opera but that did not surprise me since it is based on the same code as Google Chrome. Finally I tried Internet Explorer 11 and lo and behold the process worked. What the heck!
Battle continues with Chrome
Being a person who did not gives up without a good battle I did further experimentation with Chrome/Opera. When one uses these browsers Save To PDF option the resulting PDF is indded the text searchable version of a PDF. That is fine if you only want to print output from a single print job from Chrome. This was not the case in my task though. I also discovered that the problem in Firefox was limited to this particular computer manufacturer’s website invoice page. PDFs created from other websites were fine i.e. text was searchable and was able to highlighted. The same could not be said for Chrome or Opera. No matter what website I went to the resulting PDF file was graphical based only. Only when I used Chrome’s Save as PDF was the resulting file searchable. The issue is that these PDF printer allow more flexibility when creating PDF files. It seems that Google in their infinite wisdom has deemed that the only PDF printer that should function properly is their own built in version. I have have seen this high handed approach before with Google with their browser and other software and it causes me to do alot of head banging. Google just because you think it should be done this way it doesn’t necessarily mean it is always the right way.