Wiley Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible Datasheet

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Getting to Know Adobe

Acrobat

T o start off this large book on Adobe Acrobat, let’s first take a look at what

Acrobat is and what PDF is, and let’s try to get a grasp on some of the many options you have for working with PDF files in Acrobat.

What Is Adobe Acrobat?

Assuming you know little about Adobe Acrobat, I start with a brief description of what Acrobat is and what it is not. As I explain to people who ask about the product, I usually define it as the most misunderstood application available today. Most of us are familiar with the Adobe Reader software, which is a product from Adobe Systems Incorporated that you can download free from the Adobe

Web site ( www.adobe.com/acrobat/readermain.html

). You can also acquire the Adobe Reader from all the installation CD-ROMs for other Adobe software. You can even acquire Adobe Reader from other sources, as long as the

Adobe licensing requirements are distributed with the installer program. The

Adobe Reader, however, is not Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Reader is a component of a much larger product family that has evolved through several iterations over more than a decade.

between the applications noted previously and you may wonder why I even spend any time discussing the difference between Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

Unfortunately, many people still believe that Adobe Acrobat is the free Adobe

Reader program.

To add a little more confusion, Adobe continues to market several Acrobat products in the Acrobat family. While Adobe Reader remains a free download from

Adobe Systems, there are three additional commercial viewers — Acrobat

Standard, Acrobat Professional, and Acrobat 3D. With the release of Acrobat 8,

Acrobat Standard is now offered only to Windows users, and has been dropped from the Macintosh version. As I talk about Adobe Acrobat in this chapter, and

IN THIS CHAPTER

About Adobe Acrobat

Understanding PDF

Understanding PDF standards

Taking a look at the new user interface

Looking at the Acrobat workplace

Getting help

About Preferences

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat throughout the book, I’m referring to Acrobat Professional for both Windows and Macintosh and Acrobat

Standard for Windows users only. Where the two programs differ in features, I point them out. I also mention when a feature is only available in Acrobat Professional.

There are distinctions between the Acrobat Standard product (Windows) and the Acrobat

Professional product in terms of tools and commands. Most editing tasks can be handled in either viewer; however, Acrobat Professional does provide more editing features than Acrobat Standard.

Throughout this book I delineate the differences and point out when an Acrobat Professional feature cannot be accomplished in Acrobat Standard.

Adobe Acrobat (either Standard or Professional) in version 8 is the upgrade from Adobe Acrobat 7

(Standard or Professional) and both viewers are the subject of the remaining chapters of this book. Acrobat is the authoring application that provides you tools and commands for a host of features outlined in the following chapters. If you haven’t yet purchased a copy of Acrobat, either the Standard version (Windows only) or the Professional version (Windows and Macintosh), you might want to look over Chapter 2 and observe some of the comparisons between the viewers. If fewer tools and features suit your purpose, you might find the Standard version satisfactory — but remember, Acrobat Standard is available only on

Windows in version 8. Although some of the features differ between the viewers, they both provide many features for editing, enhancing, printing, and working with PDF documents.

Acrobat is an authoring application but it has one little feature that distinguishes it from almost any other authoring program. Rather than starting from scratch and creating a new document in Acrobat, your workflow usually involves converting a document, created in just about any program, to a Portable Document

Format (PDF) file. Once converted to PDF you use Acrobat to edit and refine the document, add bells and whistles and interactivity, or prepare it for professional printing. In addition to the Acrobat program,

Acrobat Professional ships with companion programs such as Adobe Acrobat Distiller and Adobe Acrobat

Catalog, and Adobe LiveCycle Designer (Windows only). Acrobat Standard ships only with Acrobat

Distiller. These companion products are used to convert PostScript files to PDF, create search indexes, and author XML-based forms.

For information related to Acrobat Distiller see Chapter 10. For more information on Acrobat

Catalog, see Chapter 6. For more information related to LiveCycle Designer, see Chapter 35.

Acrobat solutions are greatly extended with other supporting programs from Adobe Systems and many different third-party vendors. If Acrobat can’t do the job, chances are you can find a plug-in or companion program to handle all you want to do with a PDF file.

For information related to Acrobat plug-ins and companion products see Chapter 2.

What Is PDF?

PDF, short for Portable Document Format, was developed by Adobe Systems as a unique format to be viewed through Acrobat viewers. As the name implies, it is portable, which means the file you create on one computer can be viewed with an Acrobat viewer on other computers, handheld devices, and on other platforms.

For example, you can create a page layout on a Macintosh computer and convert it to a PDF file. After the conversion, this PDF document can be viewed on a Linux or Windows machine.

Multiplatform compliance (to enable the exchange of files across different computers, for example) is one of the great values of PDF documents.

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1

So what’s special about PDF and its multiplatform compliance? It’s not so much an issue of viewing a page on one computer created from another computer that is impressive about PDF. After all, such popular programs as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe FrameMaker, and

Adobe Illustrator all have counterparts for multiplatform usage. You can create a layout on one computer system and view the file on another system with the same software installed. For example, if you have

Adobe InDesign installed on a Macintosh computer and you create an InDesign document, that same file can be viewed on a PC with InDesign running under Windows.

In a perfect world, you may think the capability to view documents across platforms is not so special.

Document viewing, however, is secondary to document integrity. The preservation of the contents of a page is what makes the PDF so extraordinary. To illustrate, suppose you have an InDesign document created in

Windows using fonts generic to Windows applications. After it’s converted to PDF, the document, complete with graphics and fonts intact, can be displayed and printed on other computer platforms. And the other computer platforms don’t need the fonts, graphics, or original authoring application to print the file with complete integrity.

This level of document integrity can come in handy in business environments, where software purchases often reach quantum costs. PDF documents eliminate the need to install all applications used within a particular company on all the computers in that company. For example, art department employees can use a layout application to create display ads and then convert them to PDF so that other departments can use the free Adobe Reader software to view and print those ads for approval.

The benefits of PDF viewing were initially recognized by workgroups in local office environments for electronic paper exchanges. Today users have much more opportunity for global exchange of documents in many different ways. As you look at Acrobat and discover some of the features available for document comment and markup, comparing documents, support for layered files (which adds much more functionality to

Adobe Reader), and preparing PDFs for screen readers, you’ll see how Acrobat and the PDF have evolved with new technologies.

The term “screen reader” is used extensively throughout this book. When you see a reference to “screen reader,” I’m referring to either a hardware device or special software (JAWS,

Kurzweil, and so on) used to convert visual information to audio format. For more information on screen readers and making documents accessible to the readers, see Chapter 25.

Document repurposing

The computer revolution has left extraordinary volumes of data that were originally designed to be printed on paper on computer systems. Going all the way back to UNIVAC, the number crunching was handled by the computer and the expression was the printed piece. Today, forms of expression have evolved to many different media. No longer do people want to confine themselves to printed material. Now, in addition to publishing information on paper, we use CD-ROMs, the Internet, file exchanges, and meeting sessions via the Internet between computers. Sometimes we use motion video, television, and satellite broadcasts. As high-speed access evolves, we’ll see much larger bandwidths, so real-time communication will eventually become commonplace.

Technology will advance, bringing many improvements to bandwidth, performance, and speed. To enable the public to access the mountains of digital data held on computer systems in a true information superhighway world, files need to be converted to a common format. A common file format would also enable new documents to be more easily repurposed, to exploit the many forms of communication that we use today and expect to use tomorrow.

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat

Acrobat Professional has added more tools for helping users repurpose documents. Tools for repairing problem files, downsizing file sizes, porting files to a range of different devices, and eliminating unnecessary data are part of the many features found in Acrobat Professional. In addition, the new PDF/A format available in

Acrobat 8 is designed specifically for archiving documents. A standards committee has developed this format so documents viewed on computer systems 100 years from now will be compatible with future operating systems.

PDF and Adobe PostScript

The de facto standard for nearly all printing in the graphics industry has been Adobe PostScript. While

PostScript is still the dominant printing language, this will slowly change because Adobe has recently announced support for PDF as the new print standard.

Okay, so how does PostScript relate to PDF? In the initial release of Acrobat, all PDF conversion began with a file that was created as a PostScript file. Users selected the Print command in an authoring program and printed the file to disk — thus creating a PostScript file. This file was then opened in the Acrobat Distiller program and Distiller converted the PostScript to a PDF.

Distiller is still a part of Acrobat. In some cases, creating a PDF from a PostScript file rather than through any of the many other means available may be preferable. It could be that you have a problem with exporting to PDF from a program, such as fonts not appearing embedded, or you may need to create a PDF for a special purpose such as printing and prepress. In such circumstances using Acrobat Distiller may be your best solution for generating a PDF document to properly suit the purpose.

For information related to printing PostScript files and using Acrobat Distiller see Chapter 10.

Printing to PostScript and opening PostScript files in Distiller is used much less today because now so many programs support PDF creation through one-button clicks or using the Save As command. However, many of these one-button clicks still use the Distiller application in the background to create the PDF file. You may not see Distiller launched when PDFs are created in the background, but the program is working away to convert your authoring application document to a PDF file.

PostScript can be a problem solver for you, and you may have an occasional need to use it even if your workflow does not require its use all the time. The more you know about PostScript and Acrobat Distiller, the more often you might be able to rescue problem files that don’t seem to properly convert to PDF.

PDF versions

Acrobat is now in version 8. The version number indicates the number of releases of the product. PDF is a file format and with it you’ll also find a version number. The PDF version relates to the specifications of the file format; for the end user it’s usually not so important to understand all the specifications as much as it is to know what it does for you or what you can expect from it. If you create PDF documents for users of older Acrobat viewers and use the newer PDF format, your users may not be able to view your PDF files.

Conversely, creating PDF files with the older version might prohibit you from using some newer features in the recent release.

PDF versions are typically referred to as Acrobat Compatibility. A PDF version 1.7 file, for example, is an

Acrobat 8 compatible file. To understand how the PDF version relates to the Acrobat version, simply add the digits of the PDF version together. For example, PDF version 1.4 is Acrobat 5–compatible (1 + 4 = 5).

PDF version 1.5 is Acrobat 6–compatible, and so on.

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1

Each PDF version provides support for additional features. It’s not as important to know all the features enabled by one version as it is to know which PDF version you need to use. For example, to optimize a PDF file for printing, you may need to use PDF version 1.3 (Acrobat 4–compatible). Or, if you want to embed movie files in a PDF, then you need to use an Acrobat 6–compatible file (PDF version 1.5). Or, you may want to add password security to a PDF that requires a newer Acrobat viewer to open a file using a password.

Rather than try to remember a long list of compatible features, you are generally informed when one PDF version is needed over another as you work through editing PDFs in Acrobat. In addition, when you know your user audience and the version of Adobe Reader or Acrobat that users have installed on computers, you’ll know which Acrobat-compatible version of a PDF to create.

Understanding PDF Standards

PDF has been adopted as a standard file format in many industries, including engineering, legal, manufacturing, and prepress and printing. Even the United States Federal Government, has embraced PDF as a standard file format.

So what are standards? Without regulation and approved standards, the computer industry would be chaotic. Fortunately, an international committee known as the International Organization for

Standardization (ISO) develops and approves standards for the technical industry. This international committee, an entity apart from Adobe Systems, has approved and developed substandards of the PDF format.

The PDF standards available now include the following: n PDF/X. This standard is a subset of the PDF format used in the printing industry. PDFs meeting

PDF/X compliance are typically reliable and, theoretically, can be accurately printed on almost any kind of PostScript device.

n PDF/E. This standard is a subset of the PDF format designed for engineers to insure that industrial designs and drawings comply with a PDF standard.

n PDF/A. This standard is a subset of the PDF format used for archiving documents. The standards committee wants to insure that the files you create today and save as PDF can be viewed by computers many years in the future. To do so, the PDFs you create for archival purposes can be saved as PDF/A documents.

n PDF/UA. Although, as of this writing, this subset of the PDF format is in an early draft stage, you may be hearing more about it in the near future — about one to two years from this writing. The goal of this proposed new standard is to provide universal access (UA) to all users including those persons working with assistive devices (see Chapter 25 for more on PDFs and assistive devices).

The proposed new format is in the hands of the AIIMS Standards Board Committee that also proposed the PDF/X and PDF/A standards and submitted them to the ISO. People interested in participating on the committee can find more information at www. aiim.org/standards

.asp?ID=27861 .

Looking at the New User Interface

If you’re an Acrobat user, the first thing you’ll notice when you launch Adobe Acrobat 8 or Adobe Reader 8 is a new appearance for the user interface (UI). Many changes have been made to the Acrobat window, some

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat of which you may like and others you may not. I’ll explain more about the user interface in later chapters where I discuss tools and viewing PDF documents. For now, let me share the reasons why Adobe has made the current significant changes to Acrobat 8.

Adobe Systems is a company committed to user feedback and responding to user needs. Most often, we find changes being made in Acrobat, and all of Adobe’s products, as the result of a demand by a significant number of users. For instance, you might wonder why a great feature is removed from one version of the product. The answer may simply be that a number of IT managers were struggling with a security loophole caused by the feature.

The change in Acrobat’s user interface was made because of a large demand by enterprise users who want

Acrobat to appear similar to other programs used, such as the Office products and Web browsers. You may not agree, but Adobe can only respond to the majority and the majority is asking for something similar to the look and feel of the current release.

Such changes require all of us to become familiar with some new ways to move around a document and become familiar with the way your documents appear in an Acrobat window. As you can see in Figure 1.1, the Acrobat workplace has changed appearance. For those familiar with earlier versions of Acrobat, you’ll notice some obvious changes in the user interface.

FIGURE 1.1

The new Acrobat 8 user interface

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1 n Color Scheme. The Acrobat window has changed color because many users want to have more emphasis on the document page and less on the Acrobat workspace. The contrast in color between the background Document pane color emphasizes document pages more when the pages are white. White is the most common page color used by most users.

n Elimination of the Status Bar. You’ll notice immediately that the familiar Status bar in Acrobat 8 is now absent. This decision was made to provide more viewing area for document pages. If you like having tools previously found in the Status bar in view, don’t worry. I’ll explain how to create a Status bar look in Chapter 5.

n Icons in the Navigation pane. Another obvious change in the user interface is the appearance of icons in the Navigation pane at the far left side of the Acrobat window. Again, this change was made to provide users more space in a crowded window. In earlier versions of Acrobat, we saw names for the Navigation panels, such as Bookmarks, Pages, Security, Comments, Attachments, and so on. These names took up quite a bit of real estate especially if you loaded a number of additional Navigation panels made available by selecting View ➪ Navigation Panels and selecting a panel from the submenu. After dragging a panel to the Navigation pane, the panels quickly begin to crowd the available space. By using icons, you can easily store more individual panels in the Navigation pane.

If you want to begin to associate the icons with the Navigation panel names, just open the

View ➪ Navigation Panels menu. All the Navigation panels are listed by icon and name, including the default Navigation panels you see when you first launch Adobe Acrobat.

n Document windows with toolbars. This user interface change was again made because of strong demand from users who wanted Acrobat to appear similar to other Windows and Macintosh programs. Although the view departs from Adobe’s Creative Suite programs, Adobe found more users of Acrobat working in Microsoft Office and Internet Web browsers. Separate document windows with toolbars associated with each window was the demand and Adobe responded. You can choose in a preference setting whether to view PDF documents with or without toolbars attached to each document.

Additional UI changes are discussed later in Chapter 5, along with some workarounds if you happen to prefer the old Acrobat viewer look.

Acrobat Environment

Acrobat provides you with features such as menu commands, toolbars, and palettes to accomplish work for whatever goal you hope to achieve with PDF documents. When you launch the program you see many of these features in the Acrobat window. Just so you know what is being referred to when I discuss accessing a feature in Acrobat, take a look at Figure 1.2 to understand the names used to describe the various areas of the new Acrobat workplace.

A Title bar. By default, the name of the file you open appears in the title bar. The title appearing in the title bar can change according to an option for displaying the Document Title in the Initial

View properties.

For information related to Initial View and displaying Document Titles, see Chapter 4.

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat

B Menu bar. The menu bar contains all the top-level menu commands. These menu choices are also available from various actions associated with links and form fields when you choose the

Execute a menu item command in the Actions Properties dialog box for links, form fields, and other features that permit associating an action with a command. When viewing files showing toolbars and menus for each open document, the Acrobat window appears as shown in Figure

1.2. This view can be toggled off in a preference setting.

FIGURE 1.2

The Acrobat Professional workplace contains menus, toolbars, and palettes.

F B A D C E

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N O

For information related to link actions and the Execute a menu item command action type, see

Chapter 22. For more information on actions with form fields, see Part VI. For making preference choices for viewing PDFs, see “Customizing the Acrobat Workplace” later in this chapter.

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1

C Toolbars. A number of individual toolbars are nested below the menu bar. When preferences are set to view toolbars attached to each open document, you’ll see multiple sets of toolbars. Toolbars are marked with a vertical separator bar at the left side of the toolbar. This bar can be selected and dragged to move it out of the Toolbar Well.

For information related to working with toolbars, see the “Tools and toolbars” section later in this chapter.

D Floating toolbar. Toolbars can be opened by accessing the More Tools drop-down menu and selecting a toolbar name. When a toolbar is opened, it appears as a floating toolbar. Floating toolbars can be docked in the Toolbar Well.

E Toolbar Well. The Toolbar Well houses the toolbars. You can drag toolbars away from the Toolbar

Well or add other toolbars and expand the Toolbar Well to house your new additions. When you drag a toolbar away from the Toolbar Well, the toolbar is “undocked” and becomes a floating toolbar. When you drag a floating toolbar and drop it in the Toolbar Well, the toolbar becomes

“docked.”

F Palette pull-down menu. Individual panels can be tucked away in the Navigation pane (see

Navigation pane later in this list) or appear anywhere in the Acrobat window. Each palette contains its own menus accessible by clicking the down-pointing arrow. These menus are referred to as palette pull-down menus in all subsequent chapters.

G Pages panel. When you open the Pages panel, you’ll see thumbnail images of each page in your document and you’ll find many page-editing features available to you from the Pages panel palette pull-down menu.

For information related to using the many options available in the Pages panel, see Chapter 16.

H Bookmarks panel. The second default panel appearing in the Navigation pane is the Bookmarks panel. If bookmarks are contained in the PDF document, they appear in the palette when the palette is open.

For information related to creating bookmarks from authoring programs, see Chapter 9. For information related to creating and managing bookmarks in Acrobat, see Chapter 22.

I Signatures panel. If digital signatures are included in your PDF document, they can be viewed in the Signatures panel.

For information related to digital signatures, see Chapter 26.

J How To. The How To pane has been moved in Acrobat 8 to the Navigation pane. In Acrobat 7, this pane appeared on the right side of the document window. The How To pane contains some help information related to many common PDF editing tasks. Users of previous versions of

Acrobat will notice the How To pane has replaced the default appearance of the Layers pane.

K Page thumbnails. When the Pages panel is opened, page thumbnails of all the document pages appear within the Pages panel.

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat

L Attachments. The Attachments pane is used to show all file attachments in a document.

To learn how to use file attachments, see Chapter 12.

M Comments panel. When you open the Comments panel, the display of comments and reviews is shown horizontally at the bottom of the Acrobat window.

To learn how to use the Comments panel options, see Chapter 20.

N Navigation pane. The Navigation pane can be expanded or collapsed. The view in Figure 1.1 is an expanded view where the Bookmarks panel is the active pane. To open the Navigation pane you can click a panel to display the respective information associated with that panel in the expanded palette window. Clicking again on the panel collapses the view. You can also use the keyboard shortcut F4 to expand and collapse the Navigation pane.

O Document pane. The Document pane is the container for PDF files you see in Acrobat. When no file is open, the Document pane is empty. When you open a PDF document, the document appears in the Document pane.

For more detail on specific menu commands, tools, and palettes, see the related chapters to discover the different options available to you. All of the items discussed here are explained in more depth in subsequent chapters.

Menus

As with any program operating on a computer system that supports a Windows type of environment, you’ll notice menu commands at the top level of the Acrobat window. Users of previous versions will notice that

Acrobat 8 features an additional menu that contains commands specific to creating PDF forms. If at first glance you don’t see an option you used in Acrobat 7, poke around the menus. None of the Acrobat 7 features have been eliminated; they may just be in a different place or referred to by a different name.

File menu

The File menu is where you open and close documents, create PDF files, import and export certain data, access print commands, and find some other nifty new additions in Acrobat. The Mac and Windows operating systems display recent files in different menus. On the Mac in OS X you’ll find recently viewed documents by choosing File ➪ Open Recent File. This command opens a submenu where you can access recent documents. On Windows, a list of the recently viewed documents is located at the bottom of the File menu, as shown in Figure 1.3.

Note that a new menu command, Start Meeting, appears in the File menu. This command gets you started with Adobe Breeze as I explain in Chapter 29.

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FIGURE 1.3

Recently opened files in Windows appear at the bottom of the File menu. Macintosh users can display a list of recently viewed files by choosing File ➪ Open Recent File.

Edit menu

As shown in Figure 1.4, the traditional Cut, Copy, and Paste commands are located in the Edit menu along with other familiar commands from Acrobat 7. There are no changes to the Edit menu from Acrobat 7.

FIGURE 1.4

The Edit menu contains the same commands found in Acrobat 7.

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Part I Welcome to Adobe Acrobat

View menu

The View menu (see Figure 1.5) contains all the commands you’ll use for viewing PDF documents. An addition to the View menu is the Reading Mode command. This command dismisses the Navigation pane and appears similar to the display you see when reading articles. The Wireframe command has changed to Line

Weights you see at the bottom of the menu.

For more information on using Reading Mode, see Chapter 5.

Document menu

The Document menu (see Figure 1.6) contains a collection of commands specific to document handling.

Options in the Document menu have a few changes in Acrobat 8 compared to the options in Acrobat 7.

Notice a new command — Enable Features in Adobe Reader, which appears in addition to Enable for

Commenting and Analysis found in Acrobat 7 and used to enable PDFs for commenting in Reader. This new command now enables you to add both commenting and saving from data in Adobe Reader. The Paper

Capture command has changed names to Scan to PDF and a new command exists for optimizing scanned

PDF files. The OCR feature in Acrobat remains the same and is all available in the Text Recognition submenu. In addition to these new commands, we find the Examine Document command and Manage embedded index appearing in Acrobat 8.

For information related to enabling PDFs for form data saving, see Chapter 19 where all the enabling features are discussed. For more information on examining documents, take a look at

Chapter 19. For more information on embedding index files, look to Chapter 6 where I talk about search indexes and searching PDF files.

FIGURE 1.5

The View menu contains commands for viewing PDF documents and navigating through pages and different PDF files.

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FIGURE 1.6

The Document menu reflects several changes in Acrobat 8.

Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1

Comments menu

Some new menu commands in the Comments menu shown in Figure 1.7 include Send for Shared Review,

Upload for Browser-Based Review, Search for Additional Services, and a number of different export commands for exporting comments to MS Word, AutoCAD, and to a data file.

For details on working with comment reviews, see Chapter 21. For import/export commands and all other commenting features, see Chapter 20.

FIGURE 1.7

The Comments menu offers commands specific to review and markups.

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Forms menu

The Forms menu shown in Figure 1.8 is new to Acrobat 8. Here you’ll find a number of different commands all used for working with PDF forms and Adobe Designer XML forms (Windows).

The new Run Form Field Recognition command is not only a special treat for forms designers, but it’s one of the best new features added to Acrobat 8.

FIGURE 1.8

The Forms menu, new in Acrobat 8, contains commands specifically for working with forms.

For working with Acrobat PDF forms, see Chapters 33 and 34. For understanding more about

Adobe Designer and XML forms (Windows only), see Chapter 35.

Tools menu

The Tools menu (see Figure 1.9) in Acrobat logically places access to many editing tools in a single convenient menu. You can access certain tools from the Acrobat toolbars (explained in the section “Tools and toolbars” later in this chapter) or you can use a context menu to access toolbars from the Acrobat Toolbar Well.

FIGURE 1.9

The Tools menu contains a collection of tools accessed from submenus. Select a tool group from the menu options to open a submenu.

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Advanced menu

The Advanced menu (see Figure 1.10) contains a collection of menu commands considered to be advanced

Acrobat features. A few of these tools are not available to users of Acrobat Standard such as Batch

Processing, the new Redaction tools in Acrobat 8 Professional, and access to Acrobat Catalog. A few changes

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1 have been made in this menu in Acrobat. You’ll notice the Security commands have changed a bit and a new command exists for enabling PDFs with Adobe Reader usage rights. Also notice the Document

Processing menu command. From the submenu you find many command that were positioned directly under the Advanced command such as Batch Processing, And JavaScript commands.

For more information on using the Redaction tools, see Chapter 14.

FIGURE 1.10

The Advanced menu offers menu commands related to advanced editing features.

For information related to Batch Processing, see Chapters 18 and 36. For information on using

Acrobat Catalog, see Chapter 6. For information on using all the security commands see

Chapter 26. For information on enabling PDFs with Adobe Reader usage rights, see Chapter 19.

Window menu

The Window menu (see Figure 1.11) provides menu commands to assist you in viewing documents.

FIGURE 1.11

The Window menu handles all the window views such as tiling, cascading, and splitting windows.

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For information related to window views and the split window views, see Chapter 5.

Help menu

The traditional help files added to your Acrobat folder at installation are found in the Help menu (see

Figure 1.12). Various online help support is also located in this menu. You’ll note that the Detect and Repair command found in earlier versions of Acrobat has changed to Repair Acrobat Installation.

For information related to Help documents and Help menus, see the “Accessing Help” section later in this chapter.

Submenus

An extensive number of submenus appear in menus contained in the top-level menu bar and from many different tools contained in toolbars. Note that on individual toolbars you see a down-pointing arrow.

Clicking the arrow opens a menu; some menus contain submenus. A submenu is denoted in Acrobat by a right-pointing arrow on the right side of a given menu command as shown in Figure 1.13. Select a command with one of these arrows adjacent to the command name and a submenu opens. In a few cases, you can find nested submenus where another right-pointing arrow may be visible in a submenu. If you want to access the second submenu, move the cursor to the menu option containing a right-pointing arrow. To make a selection from a submenu command, move the cursor to the desired menu command. When the menu command highlights, click the mouse button to execute the command.

FIGURE 1.12

The Help menu gives you access to Help information on selected topics as well as access to the complete Acrobat

Help document.

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1

FIGURE 1.13

To access a submenu, move the cursor to the command containing a right-pointing arrow and slide the cursor over to the submenu options. Click the desired command in the submenu to execute the command.

Context menus

Wherever you are in the Acrobat window — the toolbars, palettes, Document pane, or the Help menus — you can gain quick access to menu items related to your task by opening a context menu. Context menus pop up in an area where you either click the right button on the mouse or use an appropriate key modifier.

In Windows, right-click the mouse button to open a context menu. On a Macintosh, when not using a twobutton mouse, press the Control key and click the mouse button. Context menu options relate to the particular tool you have selected from a toolbar. By default the Hand tool is selected when you launch Acrobat and open a PDF document. When you right-click the mouse button (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Macintosh), a context menu pops up where you click the mouse as shown in Figure 1.14.

FIGURE 1.14

With the Hand tool selected, right-clicking (Windows) or Ctrl+clicking (Macintosh) the mouse button opens a context menu. From the menu, scroll the list and select the desired menu command.

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If you change tools in a toolbar and open a context menu, the menu options change to reflect choices with that particular tool. Likewise, a context menu opened on a palette offers menu options respective to the palette, as shown in Figure 1.15.

FIGURE 1.15

When a palette is open in the Navigation pane and you open a context menu, the menu options reflect tasks you can perform respective to the panel.

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Opening a context menu on one of the icons in the Navigation pane opens a menu where you can add or remove panels from the pane. Additionally, you can hide the Navigation panel icons by opening a context menu in the Navigation pane and select Hide Navigation Pane Buttons. To bring

back the Navigation Pane Buttons, press F4 on your keyboard or select View ➪ Navigation Panels ➪ Show

Navigation Pane.

Context menus are a great benefit during your Acrobat sessions and using them helps you work much faster. Throughout this book I often make references to the different choices you have in selecting a tool or command. In most incidences, you find mention of context menus. Be certain you know how to open a context menu in Acrobat on your computer. For the remainder of this book, I’ll mention opening context menus without walking through the steps for how to open the menu.

Keyboard shortcuts

Pressing one or more keys on your keyboard can also open menus and invoke different commands. When you become familiar with keyboard shortcuts that perform the same function as when using a menu or context menu, you’ll find yourself favoring this method for making different menu selections or grabbing a tool from a toolbar. Fortunately, you can learn as you work when it comes to memorizing keyboard shortcuts. As

I’m certain you know, several shortcut combinations are noted in menu commands. You can learn these shortcuts when you frequently use a particular command. However, the keyboard shortcuts you see in the menu commands are just a fraction of what is available in Acrobat for quick access to commands and tools.

For a complete list of all keyboard shortcuts, look over the Complete Acrobat help document you open by selecting Help ➪ Complete Acrobat 8.0 Help.

Pressing a single key to access a tool requires you to have your Preferences set to accept single keystroke shortcuts. See the steps for “Setting up the Acrobat environment” later in this chapter for the proper Preferences settings.

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Tools, task buttons, and toolbars

Tools are grouped together in separate toolbars in the Toolbar Well below the menu bar. The default view when you launch Acrobat contains several toolbars visible in the Toolbar Well. You can remove various toolbars from the Well, move them around the Acrobat window, close them, and add different toolbars to the

Toolbar Well.

In addition to loading and unloading toolbars, a new feature in Acrobat 8 permits you to add or remove individual tools from any toolbar. Before you learn how to add and remove individual tools, let’s first take a look at the Toolbar Well.

The Toolbar Well, where the toolbars are contained, is collapsed and expanded according to the number of toolbars you add to it. When a toolbar is contained within the Toolbar Well, it is said to be docked. When a toolbar is dragged away from the Toolbar Well and rests atop the Acrobat window, it is said to be undocked and appears as a floating toolbar.

Task buttons

One of the many different toolbars in Acrobat is called the Tasks toolbar. This toolbar houses various Task buttons. In Figure 1.16 the tasks toolbar is shown with the label descriptions to describe each tool’s purpose. Task buttons differ a little from other tools in that they all support pull-down menus where menu commands related to specific tasks are addressed.

FIGURE 1.16

The Tasks toolbar contains several Task buttons all containing pull-down menus.

The Tasks toolbar features commands for creating PDFs, working with comments and reviews, exporting

PDFs to different formats, securing PDFs, working with forms, and digitally signing PDFs. The Tasks toolbar also features the new Task button containing commands for engaging in Acrobat Connect meetings.

You’ll find all these features covered in many of the following chapters.

Loading and unloading tools

The default tools you see in the Toolbar Well when you first open Acrobat is but a mere fraction of all the tools available to you. Fortunately in Acrobat 8, a nifty new window has been added to the program to help you easily manage tools.

It’s important to realize that you have toolbars and tools. Tools appear as individual icons contained in a given toolbar. You can choose to show only one tool in a toolbar or all the tools that belong to a given toolbar and anything in between. The tools within toolbars can be added and deleted from the parent toolbar.

If you’re familiar with earlier versions of Acrobat and you don’t find tools loaded in the various toolbars, your first stop is to open the More Tools menu at the top right corner of your screen. Select More Tools from a context menu opened on the Toolbar Well and the More Tools window opens as shown in Figure 1.17.

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FIGURE 1.17

Open the More Tools window to show/hide tools in toolbars.

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Place a check mark beside any tool to be shown in a toolbar docked in the Toolbar Well or opened as a floating toolbar. Figure 1.17 shows you a small portion of available tools that appear in a scrollable window.

Toolbars themselves can be shown or hidden using the More Tools window. If you remove a check mark adjacent to a toolbar name to hide the toolbar, the toolbar and all the tools are hidden, even if the individual tools are all checked.

Yet another way to add and remove tools to and from toolbars is to simply open a context menu on a toolbar. Right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Macintosh) on a toolbar either docked in the Toolbar Well or as a floating toolbar and a pop-up menu provides options for adding or removing tools to/from that toolbar group.

In Figure 1.18 a context menu is opened on the Edit toolbar. When Show/Hide Tools is selected a submenu displays all toolbars. Select an item unchecked to open the respective toolbar or select a checked toolbar to remove hide it. Note that hiding a toolbar is temporary and only hides the toolbar from view in the Toolbar Well.

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FIGURE 1.18

Open a context menu on a toolbar and select Show/Hide Toolbars to open a submenu where all toolbars can be opened or temporarily closed.

If you want all tools within a given toolbar to be shown, select Show All Tools in the context menu.

The Show/Hide menu command in the context menu shown in Figure 1.18 provides the same commands you have available in the View ➪ Toolbars submenu. Either of these menus provides you a quick and easy way to show and hide toolbars.

The last menu item in the context menu shown in Figure 1.18 is used to open the More Tools window where you can add/remove tools among all toolbars.

Default toolbars

When you launch Acrobat for the first time or you set the toolbars to the default view, six different toolbars are docked in the Toolbar Well, including the Tasks toolbar discussed earlier in this section. The remaining default toolbars include: n File toolbar. These tools are used for general document handling. The default File tools activate commands for Open, Save, Print, and Email. When all the tools are loaded in the File toolbar the

Create PDF from web page and Attach a File tools are added to the toolbar. In Figure 1.19 the default File toolbar appears on the left and the expanded File toolbar showing all tools appears on the right.

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FIGURE 1.19

The File toolbar contains tools for document handling, such as opening PDF documents, saving documents, and printing files.

n Page Navigation toolbar. The default tools in the Page Navigation toolbar shown on the left in

Figure 1.20 contain tools for moving back and forth between PDF document pages. The numbers indicate what page you are currently viewing out of the total number of pages in the document.

When the toolbar is expanded to show all tools as you see on the right in Figure 1.20, the First

Page, Last Page, Previous View, and Next View tools are shown.

FIGURE 1.20

The Page Navigation toolbar, as the name implies, contains tools for navigating document pages.

n Page Display toolbar. The Page Display toolbar is the home of many different tools used for page viewing, but only two of the tools appear in the default toolbar as shown in Figure 1.21 on the left. When you first open Acrobat, you see the Scrolling Pages and One Full Page tool. After expanding the toolbar to show all tools as shown on the right in Figure 1.21, the Single Page

Continuous, Single Page, Two-Up, Two-Up Continuous, Full Screen Mode, Rotate

Counterclockwise, Rotate Clockwise, and Line Weights tools are shown. Users of earlier versions of Acrobat will note that the tool names for Single Page, Continuous, Continuous – Facing, and

Facing Pages have changed names to Single Page, Single page Continuous, Two-Up Continuous, and Two-Up respectively. In addition, these four tools previously appeared in a Status bar at the bottom of the Acrobat window in earlier versions of Acrobat. In Acrobat 8, the Status bar has been eliminated and all tools appear at the top of the Acrobat window.

FIGURE 1.21

The Page Display toolbar contains many tools used for page viewing.

n Select & Zoom toolbar. The tools in this group are used to select text/images, move the page in the Document pane, and zoom in and out of pages in the Document pane. The left side of Figure

1.22 shows the Select tool followed by the Hand tool then the Zoom Out, Zoom In, and Zoom

Value tools. When all tools are loaded the Actual Size, Fit Width, Fit Page, Pan & Zoom Window,

Loupe tool, and Snapshot tool appear as shown in Figure 1.22 on the right.

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FIGURE 1.22

Select & Zoom tools are used to select text/images, move a document around the

Document pane, copy selections, and view the document page using a number of different zoom tools.

n Find toolbar. Of all the default toolbars, the Find toolbar shown in Figure 1.23 is the only one that does not have additional tools that can be added to the toolbar. However, a pull-down menu exists for making choices to refine your search for words in an open PDF document.

For more information on searching PDFs, see Chapter 6.

FIGURE 1.23

The Find toolbar is used for searching words in a PDF document.

Managing default toolbars

In addition to loading and unloading tools within toolbars, the toolbars can be moved, docked, and undocked from the Toolbar Well. Here’s a list of some of the things you can do with the default toolbars and any other toolbars you decide to view: n Undocking toolbars. Toolbars can be relocated from within the Toolbar Well to another area within the Acrobat window. For example, you might find it more convenient to move a toolbar you frequently access during an editing session so it is positioned at the bottom of the Document pane. If so, just place the cursor on top of the vertical separator bar adjacent to the first tool in a toolbar and drag it away from the Toolbar Well. This vertical line is the hot spot used to select the toolbar instead of a tool in the group. Clicking anywhere else in the toolbar selects a tool.

n Docking toolbars. To dock a toolbar back in the Toolbar Well once removed, drag the toolbar, again by the vertical separator bar adjacent to the first tool, on top of the Toolbar Well. The toolbar snaps to an available position in the Well. If you drop the toolbar between two other toolbars, the toolbar you relocate back to the Toolbar Well snaps in position between the two docked toolbars.

Toolbars can also be docked vertically on the left and right sides of the Document pane and at the bottom of the Acrobat window below the status bar. For example, if you drag a toolbar to the left of the Navigation pane and release the mouse button, the toolbar snaps to a docking station and the tools display vertically. In Figure 1.24 you can see toolbars docked on the left (A), right (B), and bottom (C) of the Acrobat window with one floating toolbar (D) in the Document pane.

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FIGURE 1.24

Toolbars can be docked on all four sides of the Acrobat window and undocked from the

Toolbar Well where they appear as floating toolbars.

D B

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A C n Resetting toolbars. You can position toolbars around the Acrobat window and return them to the default positions with one menu command. This is particularly helpful if multiple users work on a single computer or you frequently change editing tasks that require using different tools during different editing sessions. In many cases it’s easier to reset toolbars to the original default view, than open tools needed for a specific editing task. To set toolbars to their defaults, open a context menu from any toolbar or in the Toolbar Well by right-clicking (Ctrl+clicking on Macintosh), and select the menu item Reset Toolbars as shown in Figure 1.25. Alternately, you can press

Alt/Option+F8.

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FIGURE 1.25

To return toolbars back to the default view, open a context menu from any toolbar or in the

Toolbar Well and select Reset Toolbars.

n Hiding all toolbars. Toolbars can be hidden from view to offer you more room when editing a

PDF document or browsing the contents of PDFs. To hide the toolbars from view, open a context menu from the Toolbar Well and choose Hide Toolbars. When toolbars are hidden you won’t have access to a context menu to get the toolbars back in view. Instead, choose View ➪ Toolbars ➪

Show Toolbars to make all toolbars reappear. (Note that using this menu command also hides toolbars.) n Hiding a single toolbar. You can hide a toolbar after it has been undocked from the Toolbar

Well. Click the X in the top-right corner of the toolbar (Windows) or the small circle on the topleft side of the toolbar (Macintosh) to close it, and it disappears from view. From a context menu opened on any toolbar or the Toolbar Well, you can open the toolbar and display it in the Acrobat window again. Toolbars can also be hidden by using the More Tools window, opening a context menu on the Toolbar Well and selecting a toolbar with a check mark to hide it, and selecting toolbars in the View ➪ Toolbars submenu.

n Locking toolbars. The vertical separator bar used to move toolbars disappears when you select

Lock Toolbars from a context menu. The toolbars cannot be inadvertently moved after you lock them. To unlock the toolbars, open a context menu and select Lock Toolbars again. The check mark alongside the menu command becomes unchecked and the toolbars are unlocked in the

Toolbar Well. If the toolbars are locked and you drag an undocked toolbar on top of the Toolbar

Well, it won’t dock. You need to first unlock the toolbars before you can redock them.

Additionally, you need to unlock toolbars in order to use the Reset Toolbars command in a

Toolbar Well context menu to return tools and toolbars back to the default position.

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You can also lock toolbars that are undocked outside of the Toolbar Well. The separator bar on the toolbar disappears on floating toolbars the same as it does for toolbars docked in the Toolbar

Well. However, locking undocked toolbars does not prevent you from moving them around the Acrobat window. You can click and drag the title bar for any undocked toolbar and move it to another location.

n Setting new toolbar defaults. If you decide to reposition your toolbars and want to keep them fixed as new defaults, Acrobat can do so for you automatically. Move the toolbars to the desired locations and go about your work. When you quit Acrobat and reopen the program, the toolbar positions remain as you last arranged them. Unfortunately, Acrobat does not have a Save

Workspace command like you find in several Adobe Creative Suite applications.

If you are unfamiliar with many Acrobat tools, you can change the tool labels to show you a more descriptive label for each tool that offers you a hint of what the tool does. To show more

descriptive labels, open a context menu on the Acrobat Toolbar Well and choose Show Button Labels ➪ All

Labels. The toolbars expand and show a text description for each tool’s name. Keep this option active until you are familiar with the tool names.

Understanding advanced toolbars

The default toolbars represent a fraction of the tools available to you in Acrobat. Many of the other toolbars remain hidden from view. The reason for this is obvious when you load all the toolbars in the Toolbar Well.

You lose a lot of viewing real estate when all toolbars are docked in the Toolbar Well. Unless you have a large display monitor or a second monitor, working on a file in the Document pane when all toolbars are in view gives little room to see document pages. Fortunately, by managing the toolbars you can elect to show only the tools you want to work with and you can move them around the Acrobat window, allowing for the best view.

You open toolbars from menu commands in the Tools menu or by opening a context menu. If you’re a seasoned Acrobat user, your first encounter with Acrobat viewers 6 and above might be a bit frustrating if you don’t know how to access the tools you want to use. “Where is that Form tool?” you may ask. Don’t worry; it’s there. You just have to poke around and search for it or, better yet, look over the following descriptions to understand more about how these other tools are grouped into separate toolbars.

Opening advanced toolbars

For the purpose of discussion, I’ll refer to the non-default toolbars as advanced toolbars. Acrobat does not refer to all these tools as advanced tools. Some of the tools labeled in the menu commands are not referred to as advanced tools. For clarity in this chapter, though, consider all the following toolbars as advanced toolbars.

You can use three methods for displaying toolbars not visible when you open Acrobat. You can open the

View ➪ Toolbars menu where you find a list of tools in submenus. Select a submenu item to open a toolbar as a floating toolbar in the Acrobat window. Another method is to open a context menu on the Toolbar Well and open toolbars from commands in the menu. A third option, and one that provides more options for viewing all tools and toolbars in a single window, is to use the More Tools menu command when you open a context menu on the Toolbar Well. As a matter of routine, you should use this option when preparing an

Acrobat session that requires you to use several tools and toolbars. All tools except the Form tools (Acrobat

Professional only) are accessible from the context menu.

Advanced Editing toolbar

The Advanced Editing toolbar shown in Figure 1.26 is one you’ll use in just about all Acrobat editing sessions. Tools include the Select Object tool that is used to select content you add in Acrobat such as

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Getting to Know Adobe Acrobat 1 comment markups and form fields. The Article tool is used to create article threads, the Crop, Link, 3D,

Movie, and Sound tools follow. The TouchUp Text tool is used to edit text on a page and the last tool is the

TouchUp Object tool that is used to select content that was originally created in an authoring program and converted to PDF.

For more information about PDF editing using the Advanced Editing tools, see the chapters in

Part III. To learn more about the Link tool, see Chapter 22. For using the Movie and Sound tools see Chapter 23. To learn how to use the TouchUp Order tool that follows the TouchUp Text tool, see

Chapter 25.

FIGURE 1.26

The Advanced Editing toolbar contains a miscellaneous group of tools used for many different editing functions.

Comment & Markup toolbar

When you open either the View ➪ Toolbars submenu menus or a context menu on the Toolbar Well, the first menu option after the default Advanced Editing toolbar is the Comment & Markup toolbar. Select the menu option and the Comment and Markup tools open in their own toolbar. Open a context menu on the toolbar and select Add/Remove Tools ➪ Show All Tools. The toolbar appears as you see in Figure 1.27

when all tools are loaded.

FIGURE 1.27

Open the Comment & Markup toolbar and open a context menu on a tool and select Show All Tools to see all the comment and markup tools.

Now in Acrobat 8 you have the opportunity to load just the tools you want to use in a review session from both the former Commenting and the Drawing & Markup toolbars. Acrobat 8 nests all these tools together nicely in a single toolbar. This arrangement affords you the opportunity to view just those tools you commonly use in a review session — a great new feature. I won’t go into all the tool names and explain their use now. You’ll find a complete description in Chapter 20.

show the tool in the Comment & Markup toolbar, open the Comment & Markup toolbar and open a context menu on any tool in the toolbar. Select Show All Tools and the Paste a copied image as stamp tool is added to the toolbar.

When you select the Comment & Markup tools from the More Tools window and check the boxes for all tools, all the tools are loaded except the Paste a copied image as stamp tool. To

Edit toolbar

The Edit toolbar is the home of a miscellaneous group of editing tools, such as spell checking, copy, paste, undo, and redo. (See Figure 1.28.)

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FIGURE 1.28

The Edit toolbar contains a miscellaneous selection of tools used for spell checking and editing.

Forms toolbar (Acrobat Professional only)

From a context menu in the Toolbar Well or the View ➪ Toolbars submenu select Forms toolbar to open the Forms tools. The eight forms tools shown in Figure 1.29 opens where you can access tools to create form fields.

In addition to the same form tools you had available in Acrobat 7, a new tool is added to the toolbar to create bar code fields. In addition two other new tools are added to the Forms toolbar. The Edit Layout tool changes from a preview mode to a form editing mode and the Distribute tool used to distribute forms for an ad hoc data collection and enable the distributed forms for Adobe Reader users.

FIGURE 1.29

To access the Forms toolbar, open a context menu on the Toolbar Well and select Forms.

For more information on using the Forms tools and the new tools added to Acrobat 8, see

Chapters 33 and 34.

Measuring tools

The Measuring tools include the Distance tool used for measuring linear distances, the Perimeter tool for measuring linear distances of angles and objects, and an Area tool for measuring the surface area of objects.

The Measuring toolbar, shown in Figure 1.30, might be used for examining measurements in engineering and scientific drawings.

For more information about using the Measuring tools, see Chapter 24.

FIGURE 1.30

The Measuring toolbar offers three tools to measure distances and areas on a PDF page.

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Object Data tool

The Object Data tool (see Figure 1.31) is used to select objects on a document page. When you select an object that has object data associated with it, the Object Data dialog box opens. This dialog box contains object metadata such as creation date, copyright information, color mode, resolution, and other file attributes similar to the kind of metadata you can view in programs such as Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Project, and AutoDesk AutoCAD.

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For a greater understanding about object and document metadata, see Chapter 5. For information on using the Object Data tool, see Chapter 9.

FIGURE 1.31

Use the Object Data tool to select objects and view file attributes associated with the selected object.

Print Production tools

The Print Production tools (see Figure 1.32) enable you to make adjustments on the PDF or alter the content. This toolbar contains tools for assigning traps, pre-flighting, converting colors, assigning color profiles, adding crop marks, cropping pages, fixing hairlines, transparency flattening, and assigning Job Definitions.

FIGURE 1.32

Use the Print Production tools to open dialog boxes where you can preview and change PDF documents to accommodate prepress and commercial printing.

For more information on using Print Production tools and preparing files for commercial printing, see Chapter 32.

Redaction

A new toolbar has been added to Acrobat 8. The Redaction tools are particularly helpful for users working in the legal industry who need to remove text content from documents to protect sensitive data such as the names of minors, personal privacy information, and data breeching security policies. When you open the

Redaction toolbar you’ll see four tools to help you redact PDF documents as shown in Figure 1.33.

FIGURE 1.33

Redaction tools are used to remove sensitive information from PDF documents.

For a complete explanation for redaction and using the Redaction tools, see Chapter 14.

Typewriter toolbar

The Typewriter tool was added to all Acrobat viewers in a maintenance upgrade during the Acrobat 7 life cycle. This toolbar, shown in Figure 1.34, contains tools for typing text on PDF documents. It’s particularly helpful when filling out PDF forms that don’t have form fields.

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FIGURE 1.34

The Typewriter tool is used primarily for filling in forms that don’t contain form fields.

For more information on using the Typewriter tools, see Chapter 33.

Properties Bar

You use the Properties Bar (see Figure 1.35) in conjunction with several different tools. After you create comments, links, buttons, and similar content in a PDF document, the selected comment, link, button, and so on displays current properties such as colors, fonts, and line weights in the Properties Bar. You can make changes in the Properties Bar without visiting the Properties dialog box. You can quickly open the

Properties Bar with a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Ô+E) or via a context menu opened on the Toolbar Well.

FIGURE 1.35

The Properties Bar offers a quick solution for editing item properties without the need for opening dialog boxes.

Customizing the Acrobat workplace

Whether you’re an Acrobat pro or a new Acrobat user, seeing all those toolbars loaded and scattered across the Toolbar Well the first time can be very intimidating. As you poke around and possibly feel a little frustration when trying to identify the right tool icon to select the right tool for the task at hand, please realize that Acrobat is a multifaceted program serving a huge array of needs for different users. Not all the tools and features are designed for use in a single Acrobat session. You may be a PDF forms author and need only

Basic tools, Navigation tools, Edit tools, and Form tools. In another session you may be a reviewer and only have need for the Comment and Markup tools. You might be an eBook author and need to work with many features for creating and viewing eBooks, or you might want to edit PDF pages and post modified PDFs on your Web site.

When learning all the tools and commands contained in Acrobat Professional, be certain to look over all the chapters where tools are discussed. Learn how to access toolbars and organize them in the Toolbar Well.

When you begin a new Acrobat session, set up your environment so you can easily select a tool from toolbars you dock in the Toolbar Well.

As a starting point, you can configure Acrobat to provide you with immediate feedback related to tools selection and keyboard shortcuts. As you first start using Acrobat Professional, follow the steps in the next section to help you customize your environment for more efficient editing and less frustration. In this example, an environment for engaging in a commenting session is used. You can change the toolbars to meet needs in PDF editing or PDF creation, or add tools for some other kind of work you do.

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STEPS: Setting up the Acrobat environment

1. Return to toolbar defaults. Open Acrobat. Position the cursor on any area in the Toolbar Well and right-click to open a context menu (Ctrl+click for Macintosh) and select Reset Toolbars.

2. Open the More Tools window. Open the More Tools menu. From a context menu opened from the Toolbar Well, select More Tools to open the More Tools window.

3. Add the tools you intend to use to the Comment & Markup toolbar. This is a personal choice.

Look over all the Comment & Markup tools and check just those tools you intend to use. Be certain to check the box for the Comment & Markup toolbar so the toolbar shows up when you leave the More Tools window. (See Figure 1.36.)

FIGURE 1.36

The More Tools window

4. Add some Edit tools. While still in the More Tools window, scroll to the Advanced Editing

Toolbar. One tool you’ll use frequently in almost all editing sessions is the Select Object tool

(denoted with an arrowhead icon). Click the check box for this tool. Other tools won’t be used under most circumstances such as the Movie tool, Article tool, Link tool, and so on. Uncheck all the tools you anticipate not using.

5. Add the Spell Check tool. Scroll to the Edit toolbar and check the Spell Check tool.

6. Exit the More Tools window. When certain about the tools you think you’ll use in a given editing session, click OK and all the toolbars open as floating toolbars.

7. Open the Properties Bar. Again open a context menu on the Toolbar Well and select Properties

Bar from the menu options. Note that this tool is not available in the More Tools window and needs to be opened from a context menu or the View ➪ Toolbars submenu.

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8. Dock the toolbars. After opening all the toolbars you want to use for a given editing session return to the Toolbar Well context menu and select Dock All Toolbars. This command moves all the toolbars to the Toolbar Well, as shown in Figure 1.37.

FIGURE 1.37

Toolbars docked in the Toolbar Well include the A) File toolbar, B) Select & Zoom toolbar,

C) Advanced Editing toolbar, D) Edit toolbar, E) Comment & Markup toolbar, and F) the

Properties Bar.

C A D B

F E

Tool Tips

When you select All Labels from a context menu or preference setting, you see tool descriptions on many tools. However, not all tools describe the tool with a label. For example, look at the Zoom In tool (the plus symbol). It should be apparent to you what the tool does by viewing the icon in the toolbar. Other tools’ functions, however, may not be so apparent from viewing the tool icons. Fortunately, you have some extra help in the form of Tool Tips. To view a Tool Tip, place the cursor over a tool in the Toolbar Well or on a floating toolbar, and pause a moment before selecting the tool. A Tool Tip appears inside a yellow box directly below the cursor with a label describing the tool. In Figure 1.38 you can see the Tool Tip that appears when the cursor is placed over the Sticky Note tool. As you move the cursor over different tools, the Tool Tips change to reflect the description of the targeted tool.

FIGURE 1.38

Place the cursor over a tool and pause a moment before selecting the tool. A Tool Tip describing the tool opens below the mouse cursor.

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As you become familiar with the tools, you can return to the context menu opened from the Toolbar Well and choose Button Labels ➪ No Labels. When No Labels is active, your toolbars shrink and offer you more room in the Toolbar Well.

Palettes

Other tools available to you in all Acrobat viewers are palettes. Palettes are similar to toolbars in that they can be docked to a docking station called the Navigation pane; they can be undocked and floated around the Acrobat window; they can contain pull-down menus for selecting more options; a series of default palettes appears docked in the Navigation pane; and you can open additional palettes from menu commands.

A couple distinctions between toolbars and palettes are that palettes can be placeholders for information, and tools can appear inside a palette. Whereas tools are used in the Document pane, many palette operations take place directly in the palette. Toolbars remain relatively fixed in size, but palettes can be sized and stretched along the Acrobat window to provide you with more room to work within the palette or view the information contained within the palette. In addition, some palettes contain their own tools where edits can be made in the palette and dynamically reflected on the document page. Palettes help you organize content, view specific content across many pages, and provide some tools for global editing of PDF files.

Default palettes

As with toolbars, Acrobat displays a series of palettes docked in a well when you first launch the program.

Palettes are contained in the Navigation pane along the left side of the Acrobat window. By default, the

Navigation pane is collapsed; however, you can save PDF documents in such a manner where a palette expands when a file is opened in any Acrobat viewer. These settings are document-specific and can be toggled on or off for individual PDF documents.

For more information about setting opening views for palette displays, see Chapter 4.

Pages

Acrobat users have been familiar with the thumbnail view of each page since the early days of Acrobat.

A mini view of each page in the active PDF document is displayed in the Pages pane, as shown in Figure

1.39. The Pages pane offers you menu options for arranging, deleting, inserting, and editing pages in a number of ways. You can zoom in to the thumbnail views as large or even larger than a page viewed in the

Document pane.

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FIGURE 1.39

Thumbnails are found in the Pages pane in all Acrobat viewers. The thumbnail view of document pages can be sized larger and smaller using context menu commands.

For a complete description of working with pages (thumbnails), see Chapter 16.

Bookmarks

The second default palette panel in the Navigation pane is the Bookmark panel. You can save PDF documents in a manner where the bookmarks are visible when the file opens in Acrobat. A good example of such a file is a Help file. When you open a file such as the Adobe Designer FormCalc file, bookmarks are visible in an open Navigation pane, as shown in Figure 1.40. You can open and close the Navigation panel by pressing F4. You can also grab the vertical separator bar at the right edge of the Navigation pane and move it left and right to size the pane.

FIGURE 1.40

Bookmarks can be displayed in the Navigation pane when a file opens.

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Bookmarks are navigation buttons that can launch a page, a view, or one of many different Action types similar to link and button actions. Anyone familiar with Acrobat already knows much about bookmarks and how to navigate pages by clicking individual bookmarks in the palette.

To learn how to create and manage bookmarks and add actions, see Chapter 17.

How To

The How To pane has been moved from where it appeared in Acrobat 6 and 7. In Acrobat 8, the How To pane is docked in the Navigation pane and its behavior is similar to other palettes. Here you find help information on some key Acrobat editing tasks. Click the links shown in Figure 1.41 and the help information is displayed in the pane.

For more information on getting help in Acrobat, see the section “Accessing Help” later in this chapter.

Signatures

Digital signatures help you manage signed documents; the Signatures panel enables you to perform tasks such as displaying signatures in the Signature pane, verifying signatures, clearing them, deleting them, and so on. All these editing tasks with signatures are still available in Acrobat Professional as is signature validation, which is also available in other Acrobat viewers.

For a complete description of creating and managing digital signatures, see Chapter 26.

FIGURE 1.41

The How To pane provides help information on key Acrobat editing topics.

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Attachments

The Attachments pane (see Figure 1.42) in all Acrobat viewers is used to display, manage, and extract file attachments. You can attach files in Acrobat Standard and Professional and extract file attachments using all

Acrobat viewers including Adobe Reader.

FIGURE 1.42

The Attachments pane provides options for managing file attachments. Attachments can be extracted from within

Adobe Reader.

For a complete description of adding file attachments to PDF documents, see Chapter 15. For more on extracting attachments from within Adobe Reader, see Chapter 3.

Comments

The Comments palette shows you comments in an expanded horizontal view, just like the Attachments pane. When you click the Comments panel, you’ll notice a number of pull-down menus (signified by down-pointing arrows at the top of the pane), a list of comments that can be expanded and collapsed, and a host of tools within the palette, as shown in Figure 1.43.

FIGURE 1.43

The Comments palette

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For a complete description of creating and managing comments, see Chapters 20 and 21.

Hidden panels

As with toolbars, you can choose to view additional panels through menu commands. You can choose to display a number of other panels in the Acrobat window and dock them in the Navigation pane. To open a hidden panel, choose View ➪ Navigation Panels. From the submenu, you’ll find all the panels available. In

Figure 1.44, the list shows Navigation panels available in Acrobat Professional.

Another way to access the Navigation panels is through a context menu. Right-click (Windows) or

Ctrl+click (Macintosh) on the Navigation pane and a menu shows all the Navigation Panels. In order to see the panels, you must first open them from the Navigation Panels submenu and dock them in the Navigation pane. Once the panels have been docked, they appear in a context menu, as shown in Figure 1.45.

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FIGURE 1.44

Open the Navigation Panels menu and a submenu displays all Navigation panels.

FIGURE 1.45

Once Navigation panels have been docked in the Navigation pane, they appear in a context menu opened from the

Navigation pane.

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The list includes the default panels. If you select a default panel, the Navigation pane opens and the panel is selected. When you select a hidden panel, in other words, a panel other than those docked in the

Navigation pane when you first launch Acrobat, the panel opens in the Acrobat window as a floating palette with one or more panels contained in the window. Drag a panel to the Navigation pane and it docks and then becomes visible in a context menu opened from the Navigation pane.

Articles

The first of the hidden panels listed in the Navigation Panels submenu is Articles. Choose View ➪

Navigation Panels ➪ Articles to open a floating palette. Articles enable you to create article threads to help users follow passages of text in a logical reading order. You won’t find any new features added to the Article tool since Acrobat 5.

For information on creating article threads and managing them, see Chapter 16.

Content

A palette designed for managing the structural content of PDF documents is found in the Content panel.

When you choose View ➪ Navigation Panels ➪ Content, the Content palette opens in a floating palette as shown in Figure 1.46. Content features help you reflow tagged PDF files and manipulate the structure of tagged documents.

FIGURE 1.46

The Content palette opens in a floating palette where the structural content of the open file is reported.

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For information on working with the Content palette and tagged PDF documents, see

Chapter 25.

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Destinations

Destinations work similarly to bookmarks, in that specific views are captured and listed in the panel.

Clicking a destination opens the associated page in the Document pane, whereas clicking a bookmark opens the associated view (page and zoom).

For information on creating destinations and managing them, see Chapter 22.

Fields

The Fields panel enables you to manage form fields on Acrobat PDF forms. You can list all form fields in the panel and execute menu commands from the pull-down menu and context menu opened from within the palette.

For information about Acrobat forms, see Part VI.

Info

The Info panel displays the x,y position of the mouse cursor as you move it around the Document pane.

From this panel you can choose to display from among three different units of measure — points, inches, millimeters, centimeters, and picas. No changes have been made to the Info palette in Acrobat viewers.

For information on working with the Info panel, see Chapter 4.

Layers

If you create documents containing Adobe PDF layers, the Layers palette permits you to toggle layer views and work with layer properties. In Figure 1.47, the Layers palette is open showing visible and hidden layers.

FIGURE 1.47

The Layers palette enables you to manage layer visibility.

To understand more about working with Adobe PDF layers, see Chapter 24.

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Model Tree

The Model Tree palette lets you examine information related to 3D drawings. You can review assets, hide and show drawing parts, toggle views, review comments, and more on 3D drawings. In Figure 1.48 you can see the model tree shown for a 3D image.

FIGURE 1.48

The Model Tree palette is designed to work with 3D drawings.

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For more information about viewing 3D drawings and Acrobat 3D, see Chapter 2.

Order

You use the Order panel to manage reading order of documents. This panel also relates to document accessibility, like the options available in the Tags panel. The Order panel enables you to add tags to a document, clear tags, and reorder a page’s contents to change a reading order that might be read aloud by a screen reader.

For information on working with the Order panel, understanding screen readers, and document accessibility, see Chapter 25.

Tags

Tagged PDF files provide more editing capability with PDF documents, and the files can be made accessible to adaptive devices such as screen readers. For adding, editing, and annotating tags in PDF documents use the Tags panel. Together with the Content panel options, you have much control over document accessibility.

To understand accessibility and the advantages of creating tagged PDF documents, see

Chapter 25.

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Palette menus

Each of the panels contains its own pull-down menu. When a panel is open in the Navigation pane or in a floating window, select the Options down-pointing arrow to open a pull-down menu, as shown in Figure

1.49. Menu commands found in panels may or may not be available from the top-level menu bar.

Additionally, some panels, like the Attachments and Comments panels, offer you several pull-down menus.

FIGURE 1.49

Palette Options menus provide menu commands specific to each palette function.

Context menus

Context menus can display different options for palette choices depending on where you open a context menu. If you move the cursor to an empty area when all text and objects in a palette are deselected and open a context menu, the menu options may be different than when you select text or an object in a palette.

However, this is not always the case, because a few palettes provide you with the same options regardless of whether something is selected or not. In Figure 1.50 a context menu is opened within the Bookmarks panel. In this case you need to open the menu on a bookmark name. If you attempt to open a context menu in an empty area in the pane, no menu opens.

In Figure 1.51, a page in the Pages pane is selected and a context menu is opened on the page, as shown on the left side of the figure. On the right, a context menu is opened in an empty area in the pages pane. This figure illustrates the different menu options some panels have when selecting an object versus an open area in the pane.

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FIGURE 1.50

A context menu opened on a bookmark.

FIGURE 1.51

When a page is selected in the Pages palette and a context menu is opened, more menu choices are available than when no page is selected.

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Accessing Help

You can see the number of different commands and tools available in Acrobat are extraordinary — and you haven’t yet looked at all the submenu options or different preference options accessed from the top-level menu bar. With all these features available to you, your initial Acrobat sessions can sometimes be overwhelming. Fortunately, the great engineers and program designers at Adobe Systems thought about you and they decided to provide some help.

Help with learning more about Acrobat comes in several forms and you can choose from several help methods to find the one that works well in your workflow. This section covers different options for getting help in an Acrobat session.

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Getting Started in Acrobat

When you first launch Acrobat, the Getting Started window opens, as shown in Figure 1.52. This window provides a number of different help items that ease you into the world of Acrobat and PDF.

FIGURE 1.52

When you first launch Acrobat 8, the Getting Started window opens.

Click any one of the eight buttons in the Getting Started window and another pane respective to your selection opens where help information is provided.

For more detail on the options in the Getting Started Window, see Chapter 4.

How To pane

The How To panel appears in the Navigation pane. Click the icon with a question mark and the How To pane opens. The topics in the How To pane are similar to those in the welcome screen. Click a topic listed in the pane and a second screen opens in the pane, providing another list of topics. Click on a topic and help information is provided in the pane, as shown in Figure 1.53.

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FIGURE 1.53

Click different topics in the How To pane in the Navigation pane to explore help information.

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Acrobat help

The How To window contains a select group of common Acrobat features about which you can find help within the listed topics on the Homepage. However, Acrobat is a monster program with many features and listing all the methods for working in the program is not the purpose of the How To help pane. To browse through a comprehensive help guide you need to access a different document. The comprehensive help guide contains more than 800 pages covering just about everything you want to know about Acrobat. There are, in essence, two flavors of the Acrobat Help guide. You can access the Complete Acrobat 8.0 Help document by selecting Help ➪ Complete Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional (or Standard) Help or you can open the Acrohelp.pdf file in Acrobat. These two documents are different in that the Complete Acrobat Help document is viewed in a separate executable application called the Adobe Help Viewer. The Acrohelp.pdf file is a standard PDF document contained in the Acrobat folder. Depending on which one you open, you have some different methods for viewing and navigation.

Complete Acrobat 8.0 Help

You open the Adobe Help Viewer window by selecting Help ➪ Complete Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional

(or Standard) Help. The Adobe Help Viewer contains three tabs appear in the top of the window as shown in Figure 1.54. Click the Contents tab to show bookmarks, Index to see an alphabetical list of indexed topics, and Search to search for keywords.

Contents tab

By default the Adobe Help Viewer document opens with the Contents tab exposed as shown in Figure 1.54.

In the Navigation pane you’ll find a table of contents for the document shown in a very similar manner to the way bookmarks are listed in a PDF document. Click one of the bookmark topics listed in the Contents tab to see the respective bookmarked page in the Topic pane.

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Search tab

You can use the Search tab to find any word(s) in the help document. Click the Search tab and the

Navigation pane changes to display a field box where you type your search criteria. Type one or more words in the field box and click Search. The results then appear in the Search tab. All text appearing in red is linked to the page that opens in the Topic pane.

FIGURE 1.54

The Adobe Help Viewer opens as a floating window with three tabs — Contents, for listing bookmarks; Index, for an alphabetical topic list; and Search, for keyword searches.

Index tab

The Index tab is an alpha index of topics. Click the text to open pages linked to the topics.

Navigating topics

The arrows at the top of the Navigation pane enable you to move forward and back to the pages you view during your search. The review history remains in memory until you close the document. If you close the help file, the review history is flushed from memory and you need to begin again to find information on the same topics. On the right side of the Topic pane is a scroll bar. Use the arrow keys and elevator bar to view documents as you do in any application document.

Printing topics

The Print tool located at the top of the Navigation pane opens the Print dialog box. In the Print dialog box you can choose to print a single page or a page range.

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Adobe LiveCycle Designer

Adobe LiveCycle Designer is a separate executable program available to Acrobat Professional users on

Windows only. Designer is used for creating dynamic XML forms. Designer also has a help document to assist you in learning the program. To access the Help file, select Help ➪ Adobe LiveCycle Designer Help or press the F1 key. The help document shown in Figure 1.55 opens.

Under the help menu you find other help options for accessing the Designer How To window and opening a scripting notation in the Adobe LiveCycle Designer help document with a link to a Web page on Adobe’s

Web site where more information about Adobe LiveCycle Designer can be found. In addition to menu commands under the Help menu you have sample files contained in the Adobe LiveCycle Designer 8.0 folder.

Browse the folder contents to learn more about creating forms in LiveCycle Designer.

FIGURE 1.55

Press the F1 key in Adobe Designer to open the help document.

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More help

In addition to the help file that covers working in Acrobat, some other help PDF files are located in the

Help folder inside your Acrobat folder. These help documents are specific to certain tasks, such as pdfmark and Distiller parameters. To view the help documents, open your Acrobat folder and open the Help\ENU folder. The files are PDF documents and can be opened in any viewer.

Online help is available to you as well from Adobe Systems. If you choose Help ➪ Online Support and select one of the submenu items, your default Web browser launches and the Adobe Acrobat support page opens from Adobe’s Web site. This Web page links to pages that are continually updated so be certain to make frequent visits to the Acrobat Online help Web pages.

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When accessing Adobe’s Online Support, your Web browser opens in the foreground while

Acrobat Professional remains open in the background. When you finish viewing Web pages and quit your Web browser, the Acrobat window returns to view.

Acrobat User Community

Adobe Systems sponsors a user group forum and supports the development of user groups internationally.

Some of the world’s leading experts on Acrobat participate through providing tips, articles, and hosting blog sessions. You can find some of the most up-to-date information at www.acrobatusers.com

. Open the

Adobe Acrobat User Community Web page and the opening page appears as shown in Figure 1.56. Here you’ll find an easy to use Web site filled with many tips and solutions.

If you’re interested in learning more about Acrobat, you may find a user group close to your home. If not, you can become one of the many people who start a local user group. You’ll find great support from Adobe if you want to start a group. To learn more about the location of user groups and how to go about starting one, search the Adobe Acrobat User Community Web site.

FIGURE 1.56

Log on to www.acrobatusers.com to find up-to-date information on Acrobat and PDF.

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Understanding Preferences

Preferences enable you to customize your work sessions in Acrobat. You can access a Preferences dialog box from within any Acrobat viewer and from within a Web browser when viewing PDFs as inline views. A huge number of preferences exist that all relate to specific tool groups or task categories, and it would not make as much sense to cover them here in the opening chapter as it would within chapters related to using tools and methods influenced by preference choices.

Some general things you should know about preferences is that they are contained in a dialog box as shown in Figure 1.57. You make a topic selection in the list on the left side of the dialog box and the related preferences are shown to the right side of the list. You make choices for preferences by selecting check boxes or making menu selections from pull-down menus. When you complete making your preference choices, click

OK at the bottom of the dialog box.

Almost all the preferences you change in the Preferences dialog box are dynamic, which means you don’t need to quit Acrobat and relaunch the program for a preference choice to take effect. Preferences remain in effect until you change them again. If you quit Acrobat and relaunch the program, the preferences you last made are honored by Acrobat. However, if for some reason the program crashes and you don’t shut it down properly, any new preference changes will not be recognized when the program is launched again.

FIGURE 1.57

Press Ctrl/Ô+K to open the Preferences dialog box. Click a category on the left and the choices are reflected to the left of the categories list.

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If you find some operation in Acrobat not working as you think it should, first take a look at the Preferences dialog box. In many cases you’ll find a check box or menu command not enabled to permit you to perform a task. As you become familiar with specific tool groups and menu commands, make a habit of routinely visiting the Preferences dialog box so you understand all the toggles and switches that affect tool and viewing behavior.

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Summary

This chapter offers you a general introduction for working in both Acrobat Standard and Acrobat

Professional and helps you understand the environment, the user interface, and some of the many new features added to the commercial Acrobat products. At the very least, you should know how to go about finding help when you first start working in the program. Some of the more important points discussed in this chapter include the following: n Adobe Acrobat is a multifaceted program designed to provide solutions for many different business professionals. Several types of Acrobat viewers exist, ranging in features to suit different user needs. The most sophisticated of the three viewers is Acrobat Professional, now in version 8.

Acrobat Standard offers fewer tools and menu commands than Acrobat Professional and is now available only on Windows.

n PDF, short for Portable Document Format, was developed by Adobe Systems and was designed to exchange documents between computers and across computer platforms while maintaining file integrity.

n The PDF language format has changed version numbers along with the Acrobat viewers. The current PDF version is 1.7.

n Tasks are performed through the use of menus, tools, and palettes that can be accessed through mouse selections and keyboard shortcuts.

n The extensive list of tools appears in an abbreviated form when you open Acrobat and view the default toolbars. You can open additional toolbars from menu commands or the new More Tools window. You can dock toolbars in the Toolbar Well or float them around the Acrobat window.

n Palettes are similar to toolbars in that they can be docked and undocked from a well called the

Navigation pane. Palettes contain pull-down menus, and some palettes contain tools.

n You can customize the Acrobat workplace to suit your work style through the use of different preference choices. When preferences, palettes, and toolbars are changed from their default views, the new views are saved when you quit your Acrobat session. They remain unchanged until you change them again or reset them to defaults.

n Acrobat Professional provides you extensive assistance through the use of help documents. You can gain immediate help on selected topics through choices in the How To pane or by expanding your list of categories to seek help in the Complete Acrobat 8.0 Help window. In addition to help documents, Adobe sponsors the development of local Adobe Acrobat user groups worldwide. To learn more visit www.acrobatusers.com

.

n Preferences are settings that apply globally to Acrobat and influence the behavior of tools and menu commands.

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