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I'm after a piece of software that will show up as a virtual printer (for example how XPS printer shows in Windows in the print dialog) when selected and printed from, it overlays the print content onto a pre-made design before saving as a PDF.

The main use for this was writing letters, sales invoices etc. currently we print onto headed paper, and scan back into the computer. For our company using templates in Word/Excel etc. replicating this headed paper would not work for us (as when actually printing we'd like to print onto headed paper).

I hope this makes sense, I've researched some virtual PDF printers, but all they do is save a PDF with a couple of other features all which are not what we need.

If anyone can suggest anything similar please let me know, or if there are any other ideas on how we could do something similar with the existing software we have (we want to be able to print from Word and Excel 2010).

Thanks, Tyler

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If i understand correctly PDF creator will do the job for you. It's a virtual printer that "prints" PDF files. It has an option to add a specified PDF automatically to the background of every PDF printed.

The pre made design for the background: letterhead, sales invoice etc. needs to be in PDF format. (You can use PDF creator to create these)

PDF Creator website

Download & install

the free version (it's tricky, but you can refuse the 'free' extras)

or the 'plus' version with no ads & better support (currently about $5).

This will install a virtual printer.

Then in programs menu choose the PDF creator folder & click 'PDF creator' to access The settings window.

Click the 'Profile Settings' button. On the 'Actions' tab tick the 'Add Background(Only for pdf)' Action, then click on the text of the item to see the options on the right.

Choose the background pdf file you have previously prepared.

Options (from the help) are:

In case the background file has less pages than the actual document you can select a Repetition:

No Repetition: The first background pages will be set. Page numbers above the number of background pages do not get a background.

Repeat all pages: The background pages repeat themselves until the end of the document.

Repeat last page: The first background pages will be set. The last background page will be repeated until the end of the document.

Add background to cover: Add the background to cover pages as well.

Add background to attachment: Add the background to attachment pages as well.

There are lots of other options. eg auto save to a folder, whether or not to preview after print, filename prefixes/postfixes etc. see the help.

You can then use it to print from any application and the background you specified will automatically added

Hope that works for you.

Cheers

(Edit) You can also set up multiple printers,(one for each background) see http://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/manual/using-multiple-printers

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  • That is exactly what I want. In the version I downloaded it was in a different place (under plugins or something similar) however set up the same way. The multiple printers is good too as we have two businesses running from the same place. Would vote up but don't have enough rep on this account.
    – Tyler Frankling
    Mar 4, 2015 at 19:00
  • Glad to be of assistance :-) . I was using a slightly older version, new versions seem to appear rapidly. I have updated the answer for PDF creator 2.02.
    – Greeny
    Mar 5, 2015 at 0:02

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