Making Bankrupty PDF Attachments Without Adobe - And Saving $300

Is it possible to make PDF bankruptcy files without buying Adobe Acrobat for $300? The answer is a definite yes. The PDF-making module is all part of the package when you buy our Official Bankruptcy Forms software (WBank4). Because Bankruptcy Courts all over the United States are permitting electronic filing (in fact it's mandatory in many jurisdictions), WBank4 has positioned itself as one of the best buys among available bankruptcy programs.

When it comes to electronic filing, it's all about making PDF files. That's why WBank4 creates PDF files that are ready for transmission to the Bankruptcy Court—all without buying Adobe Acrobat and saving you $300!

It's not that we're against Adobe Acrobat, but when you think about it in terms of what it does and how much it costs, you can't help but compare it to today's typical word processors like Word or WordPerfect. These programs have evolved into feature-rich software that nearly doubles as a desktop publisher. A big, often unused, extra is the inclusion of a "basic" language that permits users to program fields into forms. The last time we looked at the prices of these powerful programs, Word was about $200. WordPerfect was $250 and came with an entire suite of other valuable business programs. Yes, life was good to Adobe when the government adopted the PDF file format. 

So what does all this have to do with electronic filing? Well, because PDF is the file format required by the Bankruptcy Court, we wanted to give you our rationale as to why we left no stone unturned to find a way to create PDF files from within WBank4—without making a $300 investment in Adobe Acrobat.

The answer is in WBank4 which contains a PDF-making driver, PDF995, that lets you "print" your bankruptcy petition to a PDF file instead of to your printer. And if that's not enough, you can also use the PDF995 driver independent of WBank4 to create PDF files of whatever you want. The PDF995 driver and WBank4's ability to send your bankruptcy petition to your word processor opens the door to making attachments and that's what the balance of this article will address.

In addition to transforming bankruptcy petitions into PDF files, you may have heard that you must purchase Adobe Acrobat if you want to add attachments to your bankruptcy petition such as contracts, scanned documents or any other images or text. While it's true that Adobe Acrobat can make PDF files, there are other alternatives that are much less expensive.

These step-by-step instructions explain the procedure for turning your bankruptcy petition including any attachments into a PDF file. To do so you'll only need WBank4 and your word processor—sans Adobe.

Overview

At the outset, it helps to understand that you use two different but similar techniques for making PDF files. Which technique you use depends on whether you wish to include attachments. If you just want to make a PDF file of the Voluntary Petition, schedules and associated forms included in WBank4, the procedure is simple and straightforward. Check the WBank4 owner's manual for the details. Note that a PDF version of the WBank4 owner's manual is available on our Downloads page. Scroll down to the Official Bankruptcy Forms section and select the Manual.pdf link.

To make bankruptcy PDF files with attachments you must follow a three-step process. First, send the entire voluntary petition, schedules and related forms to your word processor. Second, using your word processor append your attachments/exhibits into the voluntary petition; and third, in your word processor, "print" the entire document (Voluntary Petition, schedules, related forms, and attachments and exhibits) using the PDF995 driver to create your final, all-inclusive PDF file.

Step 1. In WBank4, send the bankruptcy petition, schedules and associated forms to your word processor. An essential feature of WBank4 is its ability to send any form or batch of forms to your word processor. You do this using a method very similar to printing. Of course, you must have the subject bankruptcy file open. Typically, you'd be looking at a completed Voluntary Petition on the screen. Click the File menu, select the Send to Word Processor item, and choose Selected Forms & Schedules from the submenu.

The Selected Forms dialog will appear. In that dialog you should find all of the appropriate forms and schedules checked. However, you usually must uncheck the Matrix—OCR format item (the last item of the group) because most Bankruptcy Courts require the creditor's matrix in a separate ASCII text file. After you uncheck the Matrix checkbox, click on the WordProc button. A temporary RTF document file will be created containing all your forms. The creation of the RTF file is an intermediate step for purposes of opening the document in your word processor.

And while we're on the subject of word processors, before you send anything to your word processor, you should determine which word processor WBank4 is set to use. You do this on the Options menu. In this example we'll use Microsoft's Word although any word processor that reads RTF files will suffice. Word is best because Microsoft created the RTF standard that WBank4 uses to perform the export procedure.

Step 2. Appending Your Attachments or Exhibits. As you begin Step 2, you're looking at the Voluntary Petition again, but this time you should notice that you're not in WBank4 anymore. You're looking at the Voluntary Petition in your word processor. Furthermore, the entire collection of forms and schedules is bundled together in one long document. It's not at all unusual to have a document length of 40 pages or more.

The first thing you must do is to move the cursor to the end of the file. You can do this quickly by hitting the bd key combination. With the cursor positioned after the last character in the document, insert a hard page break by using the be key combination. Your cursor is now positioned at the top of a newly created page at the end of the file. Click on the Insert menu and select the File command. The Insert File dialog appears and you can now enter the name of the file you wish to attach. This dialog is much like a standard Windows open file dialog and therefore you can also double-click on the file name or browse to it using the Look in: drop-down box.

When you select the file and click Insert you'll see your selected document appended to the end of the bankruptcy petition. That was too easy! Many times, you'll want to attach something that is not a "document" per se. An example might be a contract that you have a copy of but did not create. A photograph would be another example. With items like these, you must scan the document or image. Not only must you scan the item, but instead of scanning it to your printer like you usually do, the scanned image must be sent to file so that you can insert it into your word processor using the Insert command as explained above.

You'll need to check your scanning software to learn how to do this. Our scanner at Puritas Springs lets us direct our scanned images to files, but it does not let us set the type of file. Our scanner creates a TIF file and thankfully, those types of files can be inserted in Word documents using the menu item:

Insert|Picture|From File… .

After performing your insert operation, you can use the Print Preview command to perform a final check making sure that your petition and attachments are properly formatted for margins, page breaks, line breaks, etc.

Step 3. Making the PDF File. This is the final and easiest step. In Step 1 you exported your bankruptcy petition from WBank4 into your word processor. In Step 2 you appended your attachment in the word processor. Now it's time to make the PDF file that will be transmitted to the Bankruptcy Court.

In your word processor, click on the File menu's Print item. When the Print dialog appears, pull down the Printer Name selection box and select PDF995. Click on the Ok button.

Don't be impatient. Depending on your computer and operating system, it may take a minute or so to create the PDF file. The next thing that happens is a Save As dialog appears in which you enter your file name and designate the location where that file will be saved. The dialog box is a Windows standard dialog where you can enter the name of the file and browse to the folder where it will be saved. Due to Bankruptcy Court system limitations, it is wise to use very short file names such as Smith.pdf instead of Smith, Harry and Phyllis.pdf. Because the path is considered part of the file name, it is sometimes recommended that you create a separate folder in the root directory of your hard drive in which to store your PDF files. If you're not keen on creating new folders and navigating your hard drive, you could use the My Documents folder in which to store your PDF files. Note that when we use the term "path," we mean the location on your hard drive where a file is stored. In the case of WBank4, it would be C:\Program Files\Puritas\WBank4\Files\ECF\. Although this placement convention follows recommended Microsoft protocol, it's not hard to see that you're challenging the Bankruptcy Court character limitations and you haven't even added the name yet! The length of the above path is already 42 characters long.

The End

The procedure is now complete. You've made your PDF file and it's ready for transmission to the Bankruptcy Court.

In our example we used another Word document as an attachment as might be the case when attaching a Chapter 13 plan that you maintain as a separate word processing document or spreadsheet template. The other example we mentioned, a scanned document, required the use of Word's Insert|Pictures|From File ….

Why did we use the Insert|Picture command to insert a scanned document? Because that's what scanned documents are. They're not documents, they're pictures of documents. Most scanning software has the ability to save the scanned image to a file. The file can be in a number of formats depending on the scanner software, but TIF files are not unusual. These TIF files can be inserted just as easily as the DOC file in our example.

There is another article accessible through the Home page of our web site describing in a step-by-step manner how to create and prepare an ASCII creditor matrix file for transmission to the Bankruptcy Court. In the event your jurisdiction requires you to prepend the case number, the article will also have instructions on how to do that as well.

The Cleveland Trust Building | 645 McKee Trail | Hinckley, Ohio  44233 | 330-278-3252

Send mail to email@puritas-springs.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Please do not use email for technical support questions
Last modified: 08/26/08