creating a page that doesn't show up in sidebar

I asked this question a while back, but the response was a bit over my head, so I’ll try again.

I’d like to link to some content from one of my pages. However, I don’t want the title of this content to appear in my pages sidebar as the child of the parent page or otherwise.

One option I’ve used is to make a PDF of this content (an article I wrote) and upload it via FTP to my content. Then I put the link to that content in my original page.

However, opening a PDF can be time-consuming to my readers. Isn’t there a way for me to add content that looks like a regular page on my blog, but doesn’t appear in my sidebar with my other pages?

Someone suggested that I find the “exclude pages” section of post-template in my wp content and mess with the code, but I can’t find where to insert my exclusions. I’m not code-savvy.

Isn’t there something easier? I tried figuring out how to use “attachment pages” but what’s in the codex doesn’t seem to work with 3.1.