Preparing and Submitting the Digital Version of Your Honors Paper

Please follow these instructions to convert the digital version of your paper to a single file in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) from a Microsoft Word or RTF file.

If you are using Acrobat Distiller or PDF Creator and Microsoft Word, the best way to go about creating the PDF file is:

  1. From the File menu choose Print.
  2. Select Distiller (or "Create Adobe PDF") as the printer by choosing it from the "Name" (or "Printer") drop down list at the top of the Print dialog.
  3. Click OK (or "Save") to create the PDF file. You will be prompted to name the file and choose where it is saved. Do so, and click Save. (If you're not prompted to choose the name and location, make note of where the file is being saved as indicated in the Print dialog.)
  4. If you create the file on a different computer, please examine the final PDF file to verify that the correct fonts were used throughout the document.
  5. No compression or password protection should be used.
  6. All fonts used should be embedded in the document. This simply means that all of the font information used to make your document look the way it does is stored in the PDF file. So no matter what fonts someone else has on their computer, they'll be able to see the file as you intended it to be seen.

If you don't embed fonts, Acrobat will make its best guess at font substitution using whatever fonts are available on the reader's computer. Substitution can result in significant differences between your intended output and what the reader observes (particularly with symbol fonts), so it is best to have the fonts embedded.

If your submission consists of multiple documents (such as a word processing file, graphics, spreadsheets, etc.), it is best to consolidate them first in one document and then print that file as a PDF document. If you aren't able to consolidate the files before creating the PDF file, it is possible to combine PDF files using the commands in Adobe Acrobat.

  1. Open the main PDF file in Acrobat.
  2. Go to the page where you want to insert the additional page or pages.
  3. Choose "Insert Pages" from the Document menu.
  4. Select and open the PDF file that contains the pages to be inserted.
  5. Verify the settings in the dialog to be sure that you're inserting the pages To check your file.

To check your file

  1. Open the file open in Adobe Acrobat.
  2. Choose File>Document Info>Fonts.
  3. In the window that opens, choose List All Fonts and you should see a table of fonts.
  4. Verify that all entries in the Type column are either Type 1 or TrueType fonts.
  5. In the Used Font column, you should see Embedded Subset for all fonts with the possible exception of Times, Arial/Helvetica, and Courier).
  6. Select OK to close the Font window.
  7. From the View menu, choose Use Local Fonts to turn this option off (the check mark should disappear). Select OK to close the Font window.
  8. Page through your PDF file to visually inspect each page as it would appear on another computer without the same fonts as yours.
  9. Print a copy of your file and verify that everything prints as expected.

If you encounter problems, please consult the Lycoming ITS Help Desk at 4388 or Adobe's troubleshooting page: www.adobe.com/support/products/acrobat.html

NOTE: the end product of the processes outlined below should consist of one PDF file*. DO NOT turn in a separate PDF file for each chapter, or for each item in the honors paper.