Want to stash those important documents, receipts, confirmation numbers or other files on your phone before you go someplace? Here’s how.
Step One: Convert File to PDF
On the Mac, you can quickly make a PDF out of a Web page, email message or other document just by pressing Command-P. Yes, this is the Print box, but in the bottom corner is a button marked PDF. Click on that to se a menu of options, including Save as PDF.
On Windows, there several options that let you make PDFs out of Web pages and other documents. Cute PDF Writer, the browser add-on Web2PDF or even with the Google Chrome browser.
Step Two: Move the PDF File to Your Phone
There are a number of ways to transfer the PDF files from the computer to the phone. You can email the PDFs as attachments and open them on the handset. (Just make sure you don’t have personal information in the documents that you may not want to email openly.)
Just open the message, select the attachment icon and save it in a PDF-ready app like iBooks or the mobile version of Adobe Reader X for iOS or Android. There are a ton of third-party PDF apps out there, like EverNote, GoodReader or PDF Expert.
If you want to avoid emailing, you can also sync PDF files to an iPhone through iTunes. You can also copy files from the computer to an Android phone with a file manager app (Kaiser Pedro likes Astro File Manager).
So the next time you need to refer to these documents you’ve saved, you don’t need to dig through your email app or struggle with one bar of signal strength. The files are right there — ready and waiting on your phone.
