gDoc Creator 2.1.0

When you need to share a document with a wide audience then Adobe's PDF should usually be your format of choice. It delivers compact files that accurately reproduce your original layout, and is so popular that there are PDF viewers available for every major computer platform (and most of the minor ones, too).

Unfortunately most applications can't create PDF files, but install gDoc Creator and that won't be a problem. Just open the document you'd like to convert, choose the Print option, and you'll see a new virtual printer driver called "gDoc PDF Creator". Choose this and the program will automatically create an industry-standard PDF file for you.

If you've got a batch of files to convert, then you can alternatively drag and drop them all onto the gDoc Creator work area. It'll quickly convert them all using the settings you define. And, usefully, this also lets you convert between PDF, XPS and Microsoft Word files, so for instance you can take an original PDF file and end up with an editable Word document.

And the program adds a gDoc menu to Microsoft Office applications, too, so you can convert your Office document to a PDF file in a couple of clicks.

The process is a little more complicated than it needs to be, because while gDoc Creator is free, it comes bundled with gDoc Fusion, a PDF editor that by default always pops up to display your converted files.

And while you're able to adjust some PDF settings by choosing from a number of standard profiles, gDoc Creator alone doesn't give you the fine control over the finished documents that you'll get with similar programs.

Still, its combination of speed, batch conversion options, XPS and DOC support, and all-round high quality conversion results mean gDoc is definitely worth considering for your PDF creation requirements.

It's not always as easy to use as we'd like, but gDoc Creator's lengthy feature set and excellent performance soon won us over