UMI's ETD submission interface will convert a Word or RTF file to PDF. If your manuscript is a single Word or RTF file, you can skip to the submission process by going to the Upload page.
If your manuscript was created using a program other than Word and is not an RTF file, there are several options for converting your manuscript to PDF:
Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional
You can use Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional (the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is installed on many computers, cannot create PDF files; it can only read them). These products can convert many file types to PDF (list of file types). If you do not have Acrobat Standard or Professional installed on your computer, note the following:
- You can download a free 30-day trial version of Adobe Acrobat Professional; after the 30-day trial period you can purchase the program on the Adobe site or from your preferred reseller.
- Many departmental computer labs have Adobe Acrobat installed; CCIT labs do not.
- If your manuscript was written in LaTeX and you have access to Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional, simply generate a .prn file of your LaTeX file and use Acrobat to convert it to PDF.
Free Online Services
You can utilize free online services to convert various types of files to PDF format:
- One of the simplest is the National Library of Medicine's DocMorph. DocMorph can convert 50 types of files to a PDF (list of file types), and can combine many documents of differing file types into one PDF in just one step.
- Another simple free service is PDF Online, which can convert the following formats to PDF: doc, ppt, xls, rtf, pps, html, txt, pub, jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, png, emf, and wmf.
- Adobe offers a free trial of its online conversion service which allows users up to five document conversions of documents up to 100MB or 10 minutes of processing time each; after those five, the service is $9.99/month or $99.99/year.
- If your manuscript was written in LaTeX and you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional, there are several online resources that will help you convert your file to PDF using the dvips -Ppdf driver included in many distributions of LaTeX. Dr. Patrick Jokel at the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry in Germany has created a very helpful page on converting LaTeX to PDF. Other resources include LaTeX2PDF and Ghostscript.
Please note: If you are unable to convert with the methods above, you can always use a digital/document sender. There are several such machines on campus. In addition, most departments have advanced copying machines capable of converting a document to a PDF. Contact your department for more information.
If you have issues with UMI's conversion process, call or email their support staff at support@dissertations.umi.com or 510-665-1200 extension 2 (Pacific time). If you are having issues with your conversion and cannot use the UMI conversion process, please email manuscriptreview-l@clemson.edu. Include specifics such as the file format you're working with, what method and program you are using for the conversion and the results you're getting. Attach samples of the original files and/or output files if relevant.
Finally, don't panic. You will not fail to graduate due to conversion issues if you ask us for help before the deadline.
Once you have converted your document to a PDF, you can begin the upload process.
