CM/ECF Technical Information: Creating PDF Files

What? A PDF document is a document that has been saved in a portable document fomat. This is a standard format for viewing files over the internet and helps to ensure that the formatting of documents is not altered by the variety of applications that may be used to open them. How? In order to submit documents to CM/ECF, they must first be converted from a word processing or other format to PDF. The process for converting documents will vary slightly depending upon the pdf writing software you choose, but typically the process is as follows:

1. Create a document in your word processing application.
2. Save the document as usual.
3. To convert to PDF, choose Print from your application.
4. Instead of printing to your usual printer, select your pdf writer printer.

No paper will come out of your printer. You are printing to PDF and will be prompted to save the PDF file with a new name. Your original word processing document will stay intact and you have a PDF copy of the document to submit via CM/ECF.

The Middle District of Georgia has placed a restriction on the size of PDF documents that may be electronically submitted. Any one file can be no larger than two (2) megabytes; our system will reject documents that exceed this file size. If your document is larger than two megabytes, you should divide it into separate documents so the file size of each meets our requirement; the first part of the document should be filed as the main document and the remaining file(s) should be filed as attachments to the main document.