Customizing PDF Output

ScreenSteps allows you to customize PDF output using PDF templates. A PDF template controls how your individual lessons or manuals look when you export to PDF.

Open Preferences

Create A PDF Template

Click on the PDF Templates icon in the toolbar (1). Now click on the + button (2) to create a new template. A new entry will appear in the Templates list (3). At this point you can enter a name for your template.

Configure Document Settings

Use the Document tab to change page size, orientation, font and other document specific settings.

Configure Title Page for Manuals

If you are using ScreenSteps Pro you can customize the title page that appears at the front of each manual. On the Manual Title Page tab you can do things like add a company logo, add a footer and customize the text size and color.

When entering footer text you can use HTML markup to customize text styling. For example, if you wanted to have a link to a web page that was bold and italicized you could enter the following text in the Footer Text field:

<b><i><a href="http://www.screensteps.com">Go to our website</a></i></b>

Note that if you want to have multiple paragraphs in the footer you must surround each paragraph with "<p>" tags.

<p>Paragraph 1</p>

<p>Paragraph 2</p>

Configure Lesson Instruction Settings

The Lesson tab allows you to customize the look and feel of your lessons. As you experiment with the step title settings the preview (1) will update.

Configuring Header & Footer

The Header & Footer allows you to customize the header and footer that will appear on each lesson page. In addition to selecting a logo for the header you can enter text that will appear in the bottom-right corner of the page. This screenshot demonstrates how you can use HTML markup to add hyperlinks in the footer. This example links to the screensteps.com home page.

23 Comments

Magnus N.

Does anyone know if it's possible to insert a linebreak into the title text (on Manual Title Page)?

Trevor DeVore

@magnus: There isn't a way to add line breaks to the manual title right now.

Andrew M.

Is it possible to add the date of the PDF generation to the footer?
That would be great for ISO document control.

Trevor DeVore

@andrew: Not currently.

Nancy

Magnus, I have Adobe Acrobat Pro and I was able to create a PDF from a file where I had set up my manual title page in Word. I then combined my manual and my title page. You can delete the title page in the manual when you combine them. Worked perfectly.

Sean Martin

Does anyone know if it is possible to customize the table of contents page in a PDF export? I want to add a title/header, the text "Table of Contents", above the generated toc.

Thanks, Sean

Trevor DeVore

@sean: not currently. You would need to either a) export to Word, make any changes in your word processing app and then export to PDF from there or b) use a program that can modify PDF files to add the text to the PDF file that ScreenSteps generates.

gorq

Hi, is there any way how to configure/change text encodding while exporting into PDF? The thing is that some of Czech language letters are substituted with wrong symbols in final PDFs. Using UTF-8 usually does the trick. Can this be modified somehow? Thanks

Trevor DeVore

@gorq: Are you on Windows? There are some issues with text input on Windows for some languages (I believe Czech is among them). The issue is that the characters are not being encoded properly when typed into ScreenSteps. We are trying to get this issue addressed but I don't have a timeline for when it will be fixed.

Sean Harrington

Is there any way to change the Font from Times New Roman?

Blue Mango

@Sean -

Look on the Document tab in the first image of this lesson. There is a font setting there for PDF documents

Stephen Bellhouse

Is there a way to customise the number of levels detailed in the Table of Contents.

For some manuals I want to list the Steps within a lesson so that they can be found easily when the manual is being used as a reference guide.

Trevor DeVore

@Stephen: there is not.

colin slade

Is there any other way to further customize pdf outputs like potentially importing into adobe indesign, I would like to have alot more control. I want to use this to send out reports but need to be able to customize.

Trevor DeVore

@colin Not at this time. We will be including a much more robust PDF tempting system in the next major upgrade. Being able to import into Indesign is another option that is on our radar.

colin slade

Is there any other work arounds or examples of people putting together cool templates? Really want to use screensteps but need to be able to see that the end result can look really good.

Trevor DeVore

@colin The only workaround right now would be to create a custom Word template and export to Word. That offers the most flexibility for the time being. The current PDF template system doesn't allow you to get inside and change anything.

Adam Casey

Hi there, I'm currently looking to create a number of pdf's that people can download from my website. However I really want to have greater control of the look and feel of the end document. You've mentioned above that you are looking to build a much more robust pdf editor. Will this be coming out any time soon? (I know a lot of your focus now is on screensteps live)

Trevor DeVore

@Adam - Once the new ScreenSteps 3 desktop client is released we will make an announcement about testing of the new product for non-ScreenSteps Live customers. The new product will have brand new custom PDF templates that are based on HTML/CSS. Aside from the more options that our template editor will provide you will also be able to create your own templates by hand.

Evan Bensch

Hi Trevor, I think word templates are better since they give more control. Can I link word templates in screensteps live? (instead of the default pdf).

Trevor DeVore

@Evan I you wanted to use Word templates you would need to manually attach them to the lesson using the ScreenSteps Live web administration area. The major upgrade to ScreenSteps/ScreenSteps Live that we are finishing up now has a new PDF template system, however. It is based on HTML and CSS. This means you (or a designer) can customize a PDF template to look just about any way you want.

Alexander Groenert

Hi Trevor,

I am currently still using the pro version. We only use the export to pdf function. As we use the software so rarely, we don't want to upgrade to screen steps 3. Is there anyway to change the header image size in the old screen steps pro?

Trevor DeVore

@Alexander - No, there is not.

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