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Export to PDF

Turn a guide into a PDF anyone can open, with a cover page, page numbers and your screenshots at a sensible size.

Choose PDF

  1. Open the guide and click Export PDF in the header.
  2. Under Documents, click PDF.The settings screen opens on the Document tab.

If PDF is not the right answer, the other fourteen formats are here, and you can see a sample of each before you commit.

Choose PDF. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac.

Five Tabs, and What Is in Them

You can click Export PDF Document now and get a perfectly good file. Everything below is for when you want it to look a particular way.

  • Document: Page size, orientation, table of contents, cover page, step numbering. The shape of the file.
  • Step image: How big the screenshots are and how much quality you trade for file size.
  • Design: Header, footer, page numbering, and your logo on both.
  • Fonts and colors: Typeface and colours for titles, descriptions and the cover page.
  • Custom CSS: Direct control over the styling, for when the settings above do not go far enough. Personal and Business licences only.
Note: The Templates column on the left saves a whole set of these settings. Set the document up once, save it, and every future export starts there.
Five Tabs, and What Is in Them. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac.

Set Up the Document

The settings on the first tab, and what each one changes.

  • Layout: Standard puts each step under its heading, down the page. Two-column puts the screenshot beside the text instead, which fits more steps on a page. Two-column is still in beta.
  • Step content flow: Whether a step may be split across a page break. Keep steps together is the readable default. One step per page suits printed training material; fit as much as possible suits a reference nobody prints.
  • Page Layout: A4 or Letter, portrait or landscape. Landscape is worth trying if your screenshots are wide, since it stops them being shrunk to fit.
  • Include Table Of Contents: Worth turning on past about fifteen steps, and pointless below five.
  • Include cover page: The guide title, description and date on a page of their own.
Tip: Landscape and two-column togetherFor a wide app captured in Active Window mode, landscape plus the two-column layout gets a step onto a page without shrinking the screenshot to nothing.
Set Up the Document. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac.

Decide How Big the Screenshots Are

The Step image tab decides how readable the screenshots are and how big the file gets. Two settings do most of the work.

  • Image format & quality: PNG keeps text in the screenshots crisp and makes a large file. The JPG options make a much smaller one, at the cost of softening fine text. For UI screenshots full of small labels, stay on PNG unless the file has to go by email.
  • Image size: Cap the width in pixels, or scale by percent. Folge never enlarges past the original, so this only ever shrinks.

Image alignment and Image border are cosmetic. A one pixel border helps when a screenshot has a white background and blends into the page.

Note: A forty-step guide at full-size PNG can run past 30 MB, which some mail servers refuse. If that happens, cap the image width before you drop to JPG: you lose less that way.
Decide How Big the Screenshots Are. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac.

Add a Header, a Footer and Your Logo

The Design tab handles everything that repeats on every page. Header and footer are on by default and both accept placeholders, so the text fills itself in.

  • [[Guide_Title]]: The title of the guide.
  • [[Page_Number]]: The page number, for footer numbering.
  • [[Date]]: The date the file was exported.

Add your logo to the header, the footer or both. Custom Cover Page opens a small editor if the default cover is not what you want.

Tip: Date the exportPut [[Date]] in the footer so a reader can tell whether the guide is still current.
Add a Header, a Footer and Your Logo. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac.

Preview, Then Export

  1. Click Preview PDF.Folge renders the first few steps so you can check the layout without waiting for the whole file.
  2. Fix anything that looks wrong, then preview again.
  3. Click Export PDF Document and choose where to save.Folge writes the file and opens the folder it saved to.

Preview only renders the first few steps by default. Raise that number in Settings if you need to check further in.

Preview, Then Export. Folge, offline step-by-step guide software for Windows and Mac. 12
  1. 1 Preview PDF Renders a few steps so you can check the layout before committing.
  2. 2 Export PDF Document Writes the file, then opens the folder so you can send it.

Doing It Again Next Month

Once the document looks right, save the settings as a template from the Templates column. The next guide exports with the same cover page, fonts, header and image sizes, and everyone on the team can start from the same one.

What this is good for

  • Send a process to someone who will not install anything.
  • Print a checklist for a desk or a training room.
  • Attach a guide to a ticket, a contract or an audit.

Make guides like this one

Folge captures a screenshot on every click, so a guide writes itself as you work.

System Requirements: Windows 7 ( partial support), 8, 8.1, 10, 11 (64-bit only). OSX > 10.10. Available in 🇬🇧, 🇫🇷, 🇩🇪, 🇪🇸 , 🇮🇹, 🇳🇱, 🇵🇹/🇧🇷 and 🇯🇵 languages.