PDFCreator allows administrators to predefine settings for their users. PDFCreator stores the settings in the registry key HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\PDFCreator.net. When these settings do not exist when the user starts PDFCreator for the first time, our default settings will be created. During this process, PDFCreator looks at HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software\PDFCreator.net (note the HKEY_USERS hive) for other defaults that can be applied.

You can now define settings in the .DEFAULT key to overwrite the PDFCreator defaults. The registry key follows the same structure. It is also possible to define new profiles there as well as changing values in existing profiles.

Note: If a user already has own profile settings, the defaults will not be applied.


Create defaults with PDFCreator

The easiest way to get started is to modify the user settings within PDFCreator and to copy them to the .DEFAULT key.

  1. Start PDFCreator, modify the settings and profiles as you like and close the application again
  2. Open regedit.exe and navigate to HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\PDFCreator.net
  3. Open the file menu and use "Export" to export the current key to a file
  4. Open the exported file in a text editor
  5. Use the search/replace function to replace "HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\PDFCreator.net" with "HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software\PDFCreator.net" and save the file
  6. Double click the file to import it again.
When users now start PDFCreator for the first time, they will see the settings you have predefined


Create defaults from scratch

If you want to change some values but want to keep the defaults for the rest, you can also set selected values in the registry.

This small sample shows how to Change the logging level to "Info" ("Error" is the default):

  1. Open regedit.exe and navigate to **HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software**
  2. Create the subkeys till HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software\PDFCreator.net\Settings\ApplicationSettings
  3. Create a string value with the name LoggingLevel and set its value to "Info"
Creating profiles involves a few more steps: 1. Repeat the steps 1 and 2 from above 2. Create the subkey HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\PDFCreator.net\Settings\ConversionProfiles and open it 3. Create a string value "numClasses" with the value "1" (if you want to create more profiles, take the respective number) 4. Create a subkey named "0" and open it 5. Create a values named "Guid". If you want to overwrite settings in an existing profile, use a predefined guid (i.e. "DefaultGuid" for the default profile) 6. Define other settings as desired. They will be used to create a new profile or overwrite values in an existing profile