Category: Acrobat

You have a 330 page PDF file in your possession. Your current project deals only with pages 8, 9 & 10 of that document. The remaining 327 pages simply are not needed for this job.

There's no need to carry along the non-relevant pages for this project, so you might want to work smartly and utilize Acrobat's Extract Pages command to isolate your needed pages from the rest.

To use this powerful command, you can access it from the document menu (Document > Extract Pages) or directly from the Pages Panel.

In this example, I have highlighted pages 8-10 in a PDF. I then right-clicked on one of the highlighted pages and selected Extract Pages from the context menu.

The next dialog box asks for specific page extraction options. I can specify a different page range, designate whether the extracted page(s) should remain in the original, or deleted after the process, and even whether multiple pages should be each extracted as individual files or not.

Once the extraction is performed, the end result is a new PDF file, consisting of only the pages to which the Extract Pages command were applied. This new file will be titled "Pages from {original file}.pdf". Handy, convenient, and a feature that's been in Acrobat as far back as I can remember.

Hungry for more handy gems like this? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

1. Print the document and hand it to you.
2. Send you the InDesign file–and hope you have InDesign (as well as the same version) and all the fonts that I used installed on your computer.
3. Create a PDF of the document so you open and see exactly how the document is supposed to look on any computer.

Metadata is information about a document and its contents (including the author's name, keywords and copyright information). These bits of information are used by search utilities.

Do all PDF files have metadata? No. If you don't specify that you want metadata in your PDF files while creating them, will there be metadata? Probably.

I am frequently asked in the Acrobat classes if I know what program was used to create the source document of an exercise file. A quick tap of Ctrl-D (Cmd-D on the Mac) on the keyboard displays the Document Properties dialog box.

By clicking the Description tab, I can often state, with authority, that this document was created in Illustrator or InDesign (the Metadata tells me so). The document title, author, subject and keywords are all listed here, as well as the document's creation date, time, and the application that was used to create the source file.

From the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box, metadata can be read, added or deleted. Additionally, there is an Additional Metadata button which allows for deeper exploration of the underlying Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) information. This XMP information can be handed back and forth from one Adobe application to another, allowing accurate metadata to be carried through the document's workflow stages, as it is passed from one application to another. In this way, the document information present in an InDesign file is passed along to the PDF that is created from it. Exploring the options in various PDF conversion tools will often have a toggle to enable or disable certain PDF metadata conversion.

Want to remove a PDF file's metadata? Easy. Open the PDF file in Acrobat. Choose Document > Examine Document. The Examine Document Panel opens. A thorough scan of the document is initiated and metadata is one of the features that is inspected. If your document has metadata, it will be listed. At the bottom of this panel is a Remove button. With Metadata checked, click the Remove button and the metadata will be removed. Check it out by visiting the Document Properties dialog box again (the Description tab). Need to perform this on a group of files? This process can be batched by using Acrobat's Batch Processing located by choosing Advanced > Document Processing.

Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

First there was Buzzword, an online word processor that Adobe created for all of us to use for FREE. Then there was Presentations (think PowerPoint… only online and free). Next came Tables, an online spreadsheet.

Adobe seems to be assembling a cloud-based suite of useful programs. The anchor to all these 'modules' is the free acrobat.com service. The only things required to use all of these services are a user name and a password. Simply visit www.acrobat.com to sign up.

Adobe has continually improved and added to this online suite of tools. The latest addition (still in beta, but is available to all, and it's really cool) is Adobe eSignatures.

eSignatures is an incredibly easy way to get your documents digitally signed. No more printing, faxing or overnighting documents. Just upload your documents to this service and get them signed quickly.
You can use your existing Adobe ID (that you use for Acrobat.com), or create one when you visit https://esign.adobe.com/.

Once logged in, you will get to upload the PDF file you wish to have signed. You can add a description of the document if you wish. You will then have the opportunity to input the email addresses of the people to receive the doc(s). You will then designate a date by which all recipients must have signed the document. You can write a custom note that will be the body of the email that the service will send out for you. This email will have a link to the document, which is housed online for you.

Your recipients will have to log into the service, and if they don't yet have an Adobe ID, they can create one by following the prompts. Recipients log in and can preview or download the file. The magic happens when the recipient presses the Sign button. A digital signature is applied to the document (yes, you can customize its appearance, believe it or not!), and the initiator is notified via email that the doc has been signed. Once all recipients of the file have signed, the doc can be downloaded. It will have an additional page added to the end, containing all the signatures, and the PDF will no longer be editable. Nice.

Did I mention the cost of all this stuff? FREE!! I have tried to get clients and coworkers to use digital signatures for years, and am sometimes successful. This is a tool that I will use constantly. It makes digital signature technology readily available and a snap to setup and use. Stay tuned–the cloud is getting better and better.

Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

In my last article I wrote about how my Blackberry was able to open and show a PDF file–much to my delight! And now Adobe has released a version of Adobe Reader for Android-based devices. Keep in mind that Reader can be installed only if your phone runs Android 2.1 or later and it has at least 256 MB of RAM and a 550 MHz processor.

Two trends seem to have led to this exciting bit of news: Apple's turning of their back regarding Flash on the iPhone/iPad devices; and Adobe's welcoming embrace toward Google's Android mobile operating system. (Google has also enthusiastically invited Flash technology into their OS. If you use an Android, you may want to keep your eyes open for Adobe AIR on your device now that the Developer Prerelease program is underway).

Adobe states that Reader for the Android features "Multi-touch gestures, like pinch-and-zoom, as well as double-tap-zoom, flick-scrolling and panning. It also includes a "reflow" mode which will take text-heavy documents with wide margins and automatically wrap the content for easy viewing on smaller screens."

Reflow with a tap of the finger? Awesome. To see Reader on the Android, click here to view a video on Adobe TV.

Darn! A few weeks ago I loved my Blackberry. Technology can make us fickle. See you later… I'm off to see if I can figure out how to install Photoshop on my kid's Nintendo DS.

Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

There's a commercial on TV for a major cellular phone carrier in which a young businessman gets out of a cab, the cab drives away, and he realizes that his presentation for his meeting is still in the cab. The sales pitch is for how one can reliably have a document sent from a smartphone to the board room. This got me thinking. What if there was no board room to zap the file toward? What if there was no printer at the presentation site to help you recreate your lost document?

What if the File is a PDF?

I use Acrobat regularly on Windows-based machines and Macs. I test files with Reader on those two operating systems, and even have a Linux computer equipped with Reader for testing purposes. I also carry a Blackberry with me everywhere. It never occurred to me to see what the Blackberry would do with a PDF email attachment until I saw the commercial mentioned above.

A quick visit to Adobe's website reveals that there is no official Adobe release of Reader for the Blackberry, although if you specify "Mobile" as your OS, you are directed to a site where a $15 product called Adobe Reader LE 2.5 is available. The list of supported mobile devices is very limited, and Blackberry isn't one of them.

Time for the grand experiment: I emailed a PDF file to myself. The Blackberry sounded its new mail chime, and I retrieved the message. I gave the command to "Open Attachment," and much to my delight my Blackberry's default file viewer displayed my image-based PDF file! Clicking on the phone's menu button revealed some convenient controls enabling zooming, rotating and fit to page.

So now I get to make my own commercial  in which I get out of a cab, realize I forgot my proposal printout, pull out my Blackberry and squint my way through my presentation. Ideal? No. Potential deal-saving feature that few know about? You bet!

Acrobat is loaded with cool features you are unlikely to find on your own. Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

If a PDF file has no interactivity, its usability is directed to the next/previous page buttons and the scroll bars. Adding links and bookmarks to a PDF file is a great way to bring your document into the next tier of usability… interactivity!

If there is a page view that you wish to link to, it can be advantageous to memorize it as a Destination. Destinations can be given a specific, descriptive name, allowing for the quick and accurate recall of the destination in the future. Not only that, you can link to a destination that exists in another PDF file.

First to create the destination: You'll need to have the Destinations Panel showing. To do this, right-click in your Navigation Panel (under your icons for Bookmarks and Pages Panels will work) and choose Destinations from the list of available panels.

The Destinations Panel will probably open in a floating window. I like to drag it (by its named tab) to the Navigation Panel to dock it with my other panels.

Navigate to the desired view in a PDF document. When you are satisfied with how your target looks, click on the Create a New Destination button.

Give the Destination a descriptive name. Be sure to save the PDF file, allowing the new destination to be a permanent part of the file.

Next you need to create a link in either the same document, or a different one, that will use your new destination as the link's target.

Draw a rectangle in the desired spot of a page with your Link Tool (it's on your Advanced Editing Toolbar). Make your desired choices for the link's appearance, and select Go to a page view for the Link Action.

Click Next.

With the Create Go to View dialog open (which you should ignore for the next few steps), locate the destination you created earlier (in whatever document it exists, open the file if it is in another PDF file).

Click the destination in the Destination Panel, return to the Create Go to View dialog box and click Set Link.

That's it! You can now link to this destination over & over again, even from another PDF file!

Cool and Easy. Acrobat is loaded with features and tricks like this. Sign up for my next online Acrobat class (I've got one coming up soon) where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop
publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that
wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe
Acrobat.