There is absolutely, positively NO excuse for it! None whatsoever. I have never asked for nor will I gladly accept a .doc file. Oh, sure, I’ll grudgingly accept a .doc file that includes a multi-billion dollar job offer, and you can bet I’ll be muttering under my breath as I open the .doc file from <insert your favorite starlet here> declaring her undying summer home to me. And, maybe wince as I pore over a .doc file of a good Mac rumor or two... or three. But, I’ll be opening it in TextEdit! It does a pretty fair job with the text parts even though it fouls up some of the formatting. And if it’s the text parts that are so important, why not just send a text file? Don’t attach a .doc to an email!

If you DO want to show off your layout prowess, a happier solution is just one File -> Print and Save as PDF... command away. In a few clicks (or deft key presses) you can create a document that can not only be read, but printed just about anywhere and, chances are, it’ll look darn fine! Just be sure not to clog up the e-mailboxes of your friends and family with huge PDF’s... or you may find yourself with an overabundance of ex’s in both categories.

Why not place those files in a central location instead and let those friends and family access it there? No huge files in their email box and no pesky .pdf stripping from overzealous  spam filters. It’s funny that I mention this because I just hit upon a way to use iWeb to accomplish JUST that! I love it when a plan comes together!

To start, there are approximately fiftylevendozen and twotennysix different ways of doing this. I’m only going to do one BUT this one may have some steps you may not have been aware of previously, so feel free to ignore the parts you’re already well versed in. So that we’re all on the same page, let’s yank a random .pdf from the web... say, THIS one. I know, bad example for file size because it’s TINY but we can still work with it.

Once you’ve downloaded the file, double-click it to open it in Preview (one of my favorite apps!). It should open up to the first page. You can pick any page you want, but in this case, the first one is descriptive of the document, so we’ll use that.  Select File -> Grab -> Selection from the menu, and use the cursor that’s displayed to select the entire area of the first page. Once your selection is completed, a new window will pop up displaying a .tiff file of your selection. The important thing here is that you make sure to ONLY capture the page area, you don’t want any of the window around it. If you accidentally select it, not to worry, just try, try, try, try, try again!

After you’ve got an image you’re happy with, File -> Save As... and give it a descriptive name with “-tn” tacked onto the end (for thumbnail). For this one, we’ll save it as testing123-tn.tiff. Drag that image into iWeb and resize it to the size you want. Mine is to the left, complete with drop shadow.

Actually, that was the hard part, just getting a nice image for display. Now, all you have to do is hyperlink to your PDF file as you normally would for any other object (click on the object, click on the Link icon in the inspector, activate Enable as a hyperlink for Link To:, choose A file and  select the file).

Now all you have to do is send a nice, short, lightweight email letting everyone know how to... ummm, Get Started with iWeb.

Or, you know, whatever YOUR thing is. :)