You want to share your genealogy finds with a newly discovered fourth cousin over the Internet, but you have Family Tree Maker <www.familytreemaker.com> software and she uses RootsMagic <www.rootsmagic.com>. Sure, you can exchange GEDCOM files-the universal format for pedigree files-but then she'll miss all those lovely charts you've created, complete with family photos. Or suppose you want to show your discoveries to Aunt Selma, who has e-mail but no genealogy software-a GEDCOM is useless to her.

The solution lies in a file format originally popularized in the printing industry: Adobe's <www.adobe.com> PDF, short for Portable Document Format, Because PDFs were created in part to capture everything on a page:-including fonts and images-for publishing output, you can share PDF files with confidence that the recipient will see exactly what you do. It doesn't even matter if you're on a PC and Aunt Selma uses a Mac. PDFs also typically take up fewer bytes than the original files, so they're ideal for posting on me Web or sending as e-mail attachments (and they can't carry viruses). Best of all, you probably already own a program that can make PDFs, and the software for viewing them-Adobe Reader-is free. The program likely came loaded on your computer, or you can download it at <www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html>.

To capture a family group sheet, report or chart as a PDF, simply open your favorite genealogy software; everything you need is probably hiding someplace under the File menu. In Family Tree Maker (FTM) versions 10 and higher, you easily can export a family page, chart or report (see box, below). FTM versions 11 and 2005 let you export family books as PDFs, and FTM 2006 simply creates its books as ready-made PDFs. Other genealogy programs that can save reports as PDFs include Family Tree Legends <www.familytreelegends.com> and RootsMagic (which hides this feature under File>Print a Report; select Acrobat File under Print To in the lower right corner of the resulting dialog box).