Best Way to Convert Word Document To PDF – OpenOffice

There are a lot of of freeware out there to convert your existing MS Word document to Adobe PDF but I found that the easiest way is to use the OpenOffice. What you need to do is to open the MS Word with the OpenOffice Writer tool and export it to PDF. That’s it!


Steps to Export to PDF

(1) Open Your MS Word document with OpenOffice Writer
(2) Go to “File” -> “Export as PDF…” You will see the following screen:

(3) You can play around with plenty of options here or just let it be the default option.
(4) Click “Export” button to generate the PDF.


Useful Export PDF Options

Wait a minute! There are few things that I think that might be useful to you.

• Export Note: This is especially useful if you want to retain the notes in your slides
  
• Set Permission Password: This is probably the key reason why people wants to convert their document to PDF. Yes, security! You don’t want people can simply copy your content. Here is the place you set the security in the “Security Tab” while you’re exporting your document to PDF. 

Note: Set Open Password is used to encrypt your PDF so it can't be open at all. I don't think this is something common people will usually do.

Steps to Setup the Permission

(1) Click on “Security” tab in the PDF Options while you’re exporting your document to PDF
(2) Click on “Set permission password”. Follow the on-screen instruction to set the password.
(3) After that, you will see the screen below. Of course the highest level of security is to:

• Set “Not Permitted” in the changes options - NOT allow to made changes.
• Uncheck/unselect “Enable copying of content” - NOT allow to copy.
• Uncheck/unselect “Enable text access for accessibility tool” - NOT really sure what this is but it seems like same with above (which is not allow you to copy).

P/S: Hope this is useful to you especially the security feature. I have tried it myself and it is pretty simple. Oh yes, this is completely FREE too. You can download OpenOffice here. Have fun!

Increase Internet Speed by Changing DNS Server - namebench

Have you ever wondered why your web browser always hangs when you enter the wrong URL address? The reason is your web browser keep looking for the IP address of the URL from the DNS server but the IP address cannot be resolved.

As long as you type in the URL address (e.g. www.google.com), the DNS server will try to resolved it to the actual IP address (e.g. 64.233.181.104). Therefore if your DNS server's respond is low, it takes longer to resolve the IP address and eventually this causes your overall internet connection becomes slower.

Usually people will suggest you to use the Google DNS server (i.e. 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4) as it is believed the fastest DNS server. Is that true? The "namebench" is the software / freeware to tell you to the answer!

Let's try it out:

• Download "namebench" here.
• Install for Windows or Mac version.
• Run the application and you will see the following screen.

• Let's everything to be default (it detects your location automatically). If the location is not correct, you can change it. Click "Start Benchmark".

As you can see from the result, the Google Public DNS is 215% faster than my default DNS server. That is really awesome. Google rocks! 

These are the suggested DNS server that you will need set in your system:

• Primary Server - 8.8.4.4 (Secondary Google Public DNS Server)
• Secondary Server - 202.188.0.133 (Primary Streamyx DNS server)
• Tertiary Server - 202.188.1.5 (Secondary Streamyx DNS server)

Follow the instruction here to change DNS server for your operating system: Changing DNS Server

Some Notes/Tips: . 

1. For preferred DNS server in Windows, put the suggested primary server by namebench. For alternate DNS server, put the suggested secondary server by namebench.
2. If you connect your PC or laptop through both LAN and Wireless network, you need to apply the setting to both network(i.e.Wireless and LAN). Basically you need to apply the setting to each of the network (i.e. wireless, LAN and dial-up connection).

Does this help? I hope so...