by David R. Mankin 
Help... it's one of the first things I teach in any Acrobat class. The Acrobat Help System is available with a quick press of the F1 key, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember (regardless of the version of Acrobat).
What varies from version to version is the type of Help file that ships with Acrobat, and therefore the program in which Help opens. Later versions of Help were HTML based documents, and opened in your default browser. In Acrobat 9, pressing F1 opened your browser and presented an HTML help file that was on your hard drive.
I was a little surprised to see what happened when I pressed F1 in the brand-new Acrobat X. My browser opened and the Help file was offered for my use, but I quickly noticed that the browser's address bar indicated that this was not a local file on my hard drive, but an HTML file located on Adobe's server. Is this a problem? No... unless you're at 36,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains in a 747, or inside the walls of a highly secure workspace.
I found a neat way to ensure that Acrobat's Help file is at your fingertips at all time. From a computer with Acrobat X installed (and internet access), press F1 from within Acrobat to open the online Help file in your web browser. In the upper right of your browser window, look for a link that reads View Help PDF (23 MB) and click it.
This will load a PDF version of the Help file into your browser window, or you can right-click the link and opt to save the PDF to your computer. I have the PDF Help file saved to my desktop so it's available and easy to find--even at 36,000 feet!
Since Acrobat X's help file is online, you only need a url to see it: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/pro/using/index.html.
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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.
This was the first thing I ran into in Acrobat X that I didn't like. Thanks for finding and sharing the workaround!
Posted by: Arianna | January 13, 2011 at 11:59 AM