As of July 31st 2009 WebCT was no longer be available at Brock University. Learn more about Isaak, Brock University's Sakai-Based LMS here. This wiki is available for others using WebCT Vista & CE versions 6 through 8 but is not maintained by Brock University.

Making PDF documents

From WebCT Wiki

<Rating> Was this article useful? 1 Inaccurate 2 Not very useful 3 Satisfactory 4 Insightful 5 Excellent resource </Rating>

1 On a Mac
2 Converting to PDF using PDFCreator (or other PDF pseudo printer) on a PC
- 2.1 Getting a PDF creator
- 2.2 Once you have a PDF creator installed
3 Uploading to WebCT
4 Related Information

[edit] On a Mac

PDF creation

Pull down the 'File' menu and select "Print". You will have all the normal print options avaialbe to you.
Instead of pressing print press "Save as PDF" or chose it from a similar "PDF" menu in OS 10.4.
Choose a location to save it in.
Save the PDF document to a location on your hard drive that you will be able to find later and give it a meaningful name.

[edit] Converting to PDF using PDFCreator (or other PDF pseudo printer) on a PC

[edit] Getting a PDF creator

PDFCreator is a free and simple tool that we recommend highly for creating PDF files. You can find the PDFCreator at our site ctlet.brocku.ca/pdf or at pdfforge.org.

[edit] Once you have a PDF creator installed

Open the document you would like to convert, within the application you used to create it (Microsoft Word for example).
Go to print the document but change the printer (often File Menu > Print).
Choose PDFCreator as the "printer" (or similar).
PDFCreator Document Properties
Click OK or Print.
You will be presented with the properties for the document, change what you feel you need to then press 'Save'.
Choose the destination of the file - within the folder of the original document or create a new folder that contains your PDF documents.
The new PDF document will open in Adobe Acrobat, within a few seconds.
You can now close Acrobat and add this file to WebCT.

Alternatively, you can use Adobe Acrobat Writer/Creator/Distiller, which has a large number of option that require their own article found here

[edit] Uploading to WebCT

To upload your file to WebCT you will have to log in to WebCT (https://webct.brocku.ca ) and enter into your course. While in the "Build" tab you can add your PDF file on the Course Content Home or go inside a Folder to save it inside that Folder. You can create a folder to oranize all of your similar files by clicking "Create Folder".

Get Files

On the Course Content Home click on the "Get Files" button. Select "Browse for Files" from the drop-down context menu.

My Computer Icon is Loading, Please be patient

A pop-up dialog box will open
Wait until the My Computer icon appears. If after 90 seconds, it does not appear you may need to update your Java or do some of the trouble shooting described in the My_Computer_Applet article.
Once the My Computer icon appears, click on it to choose files from your computer
Locate the file from the location you saved it on your hard drive (You can use the Shift or Ctrl keys to select up to 10 files to upload at once).
Click Open
An upload file status window will let you know how your upload is progressing. Depending on the speed of your connection and the size of your file(s), this may take a while.

When the upload status window is removed your PowerPoint should now be in WebCT and accessible by students. You might want to confirm this by entering the "Student View" tab.

For troubleshooting tips please see our My Computer Applet article.