This should be easier, but …

The AAUW PSA’s are distributed as PDFs, with a fairly large block of white space, presumably for folks to put in local information. Now, not being one to do cut and paste to merge information — and wanting to be able to send the PDF to the copy shop electronically, I needed another solution.

I finally killed off my version of Acrobat 5 (purchased in 2003; it broke when I installed v8 of Reader) and have been moderately happy with CutePDF Professional as a replacement. So here are the steps I used:

1. Download the high resolution, color version of a PSA
2. Open it with CutePDF Pro
3. Click the form editing option
4. Drop a text box into the white space
   • On appearance tab: change font size to 10
   • On options tab: change alignment to center and check the multiline box
5. Go back to viewer and save the file with a new name
6. Now open the new file with CutePDF Filler
7. Enter informational text into the box (web address, phone number, etc.)
8. Save the file with *another* name.
9. Open that file (again!) with CutePDF Filler. [Maybe I wasn’t patient enough, but the text that I entered seemed to disappear on the save. When I opened the file again, it was, however, still there.]
10. Finally use the “Flatten Form” menu option to save the file one more time.

As I said, this should be easier. On the other hand, when I skipped some of the steps, after I sent the PDF to the copy center, the text I entered had disappeared. [I sometimes had the same problem with Acrobat — and the “type onto the PDF feature.”] So I’m documenting it here in case anyone else wants to try this.

If you want the PDFs with the boxes (the version created in #5 above), let me know and I’ll post them somewhere. If you’ve got a better way to do this (on the cheap), please post.