Adobe has introduced some obnoxious new PDF form technology which I am seeing more commonly in the wild. These PDF forms can only be used with the official Adobe Reader® software.
You will know you've hit one of these documents when you try to open a PDF in your web browser or Preview and you only see this text.
Please wait...
If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF
viewer may not be able to display this type of document.
You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader for Windows®, Mac, or Linux® by
visiting http://www.adobe.com/go/reader_download.
For more assistance with Adobe Reader visit http://www.adobe.com/go/acrreader.
Windows is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac is a trademark
of Apple Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other
countries.
As described, these documents will open correctly in Adobe Reader. The problem is, Adobe Reader actively disables MacOS's Print to PDF functionality. This leaves people without a physical printer with zero options for printing these forms, resorting to (no joke) screenshotting the document. In short, Adobe is evil.
This lead me on a hunt to find a way to trick Adobe reader into printing a PDF - despite the fact that this very capability is built into the OS.
A necessary evil. Head over to https://get.adobe.com/reader/ and install Adobe Reader.
PDFwriter is a clunky but nifty freeware utility which acts like a printer but exports a PDF. It can be found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfwriterformac/
Setting up PDFwriter is non-obvious. These steps worked for me.
- Run the .dmg installer included in the download.
- MacOS will block the application by default. After attempting to launch the first time, you will get a dialog box saying it cannot be opened.
- Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General (tab)
- Look to the very bottom and find the button labelled "Open Anyway"
- Finish the installer
- Install PDFwriter as a new printer.
- Open System Preferences > Printers & Scanners
- Click the "+" on the left pane
- A printer should be listed with the name "PDFwriter"
- Change "Use:" to "Other..." (the default "Generic PostScript Printer" will not work!)
- Select
/Library/Printers/Lisanet/PDFwriter/PDFwriter.ppdin the finder and click "Open" (source: this thread) - Click "Add"
Step 3: Print your document
Print your document using File > Print. Make sure to select your "PDFwriter" printer.
Find generated PDFs in /Users/Shared/PDFwriter/{username}/.
If your generated files are empty (zero bytes), you probably used the default "Generic PostScript Printer" driver. Reread the instructions above for install the new printer.