If you use the latest version of Omniture’s SiteCatalyst, you are probably aware of how poorly their nice pretty reports translate to PDF, Word, and Excel when you use the “save” tools available right there in the suite. Images get removed, text gets misaligned, and colors get skewed.

Today I devised a nice, quick method for getting a printable report that looks identical to the report you see on your screen. The one downside, no selectable text for copy/paste later. But if that’s your concern, rather than printing, you probably aren’t worried about format as much anyway.

The solution I created involves downloading a FireFox extension called Pdf It! and Omniture’s own print feature.

Once you have Pdf It! installed and your report you wish to print is on the screen, simply click the print icon in SiteCatalyst’s toolbar at the top of your report. This will open a new window with limited browser chrome (toolbars, status bars, etc.) and will load your report without any of the extra navigation at top or left of your report. Basically a nice printable report. Only to print from this screen doesn’t always give the result you desire as browser to printer support isn’t always the greatest. You will still run into issues with missing images, cut off edges, etc.

So, the next thing to do is cancel the print job that automatically appears. Now you are left with just the print window. Right click somewhere in that print window and select Pdf It! > Save as PDF > Whole Page. Pdf It! will open a save dialogue and you can save that page to your desired directory. From here you can simply open that newly created PDF and print. Or if you prefer, attach it in an email to the people who care.