Adobe Acrobat is a family of computer programs designed to view, create, manipulate and manage files in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).
#29936
Cleaning up PDF Documents in Acrobat
If you are posting your PDF document to a web site, you'll generally want to upload a clean copy that will streamline the viewing experience for your site visitors. This tip outlines a quick way to remove unnecessary annotations, widgets, JavaScript, links, bookmarks and attachments, along with optimizing your documents for fast web viewing.
Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#21893
In Acrobat 4, you open one PDF file. Then in the 'document' menu, choose 'insert file.' You’ll have to do this four times to bring your five documents together.
Harris, Steve. PDFzone (2004). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22594
If your response to the question 'How do you use Acrobat comments?' is a mumbled 'No comment,' then listen up. Comments and annotations are some of the most powerful ways in which Acrobat can streamline your creative workflow. Here are some tips.
Dennis, Anita. Creative Pro (2003). Design>Document Design>Workflow>Adobe Acrobat
#23084
The default layout of the Pages pane displays a single column of small thumbnail pictures of the pages. The default is fine for most kinds of work when you have a document consisting of several pages. However, when working with a very large document, you might want to make the thumbnails smaller and increase the number of thumbnail columns to see more at once. If you have to be able to see the content of the thumbnails, you'll want to increase their size.
Baker, Donna L. PlanetPDF (2001). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#12949
In December 1999, I asked: 'Is there any tool that currently exists to convert a bunch of html pages to pdf?' Thanks to all for the replies I received. There are two main solutions. (1) Print directly from the browser, and choose either Distiller or PDFWriter as the printer to turn the file into a pdf. For those of you who warned me that I might have to edit out the footer and header (typically the address of the page, the time etc), these can be edited out, in IE 5 at least, by selecting Page Setup from the File menu, and editing the Headers and Footers section. (2) Use Acrobat's web capture feature (accessed for example, by selecting Open Web Page from the File menu). There is one major caution with this approach: it does not open local web pages using the formats 'file:///' or 'c:\' It turns out that the syntax is the all important thing; I've used '|' (pipe) where ':' (colon) would normally be used after the C drive reference.
McCarthy, Christopher. TECHWR-L. Design>Web Design>HTML>Adobe Acrobat
#22773
Converting Word Documents with Embedded Files 
How can I convert Word documents to PDF and ensure their embedded Excel documents also get converted?
Boulay, J.R. PDFzone (2004). Design>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#18519
This handout can help you with your PDF problems in Acrobat 3, 4, and 5. This handout does not attempt to address the Truth, but tries to share some hard-won advice about consistently getting good PDF.
Anthrobytes Consulting (1999). Design>Publishing>Online>Adobe Acrobat
#30786
Creating Coloured Hyperlinks in an Index in a PDF File 
This article explains how to create coloured hyperlinks in an index in a PDF file, using Microsoft Word as the source document for the PDF file. Many authors create PDF files using Word as the source document. Most Word-to-PDF converters create a hyperlink in the PDF file if a hyperlink exists in the Word document. Unfortunately, Word does not create hyperlinked cross-references in an index, so no PDF creation tool can directly generate a hyperlinked index. The Sonar Bookends Activate plug-in for Acrobat creates hyperlinks for page numbers in indexes in PDF files. The plug-in does not change the colour of new hyperlinks, and it does not create visible rectangles for the hyperlinks. This article explains how to colour the hyperlinks in the Word source document using macro.
Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2006). Articles>Indexing>User Interface>Adobe Acrobat
#22592
Dynamic stamps consist of the PDF image of the stamp and a text form field that contains JavaScript to make your stamp dynamic. For example, the Dynamic Stamp 'Approved' contains a form field that generates user name, time and date.
DeFurio, Lori. PlanetPDF (2003). Design>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#14864
Starting with a scan is honestly not the very best. The new forms designer from Amgraf is a power tool and gives you many good features. If you have to edit the base scan, your best bet is indeed to recreate it. You might try Adobe Illustrator, or Deneba's Canvas 8 helping you. Another possibility might be OmniForm by ScanSoft. You also might look at the new tool from Adobe's Capture suite, also known as Tea Party, which might help a bit as well.
PDFzone (2000). Design>Web Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#20479
Creating Interactive Documents for PDF
Learn how to add movies, sound clips, and interactive buttons to an Adobe InDesign® CS document. When you export the document to Adobe® PDF, readers can view movies, play sound clips, and activate buttons in Adobe Acrobat® or Adobe Reader®. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add a movie and buttons that play, pause, resume, and stop the movie in the exported PDF document.
#22357
Creating PDF Documents from HTML Documents
In this topic, you will create PDF documents from HTML documents.
#18321
Creating PDF Files from FrameMaker Documents
An issue that has come up over and over again on several FrameMaker and Acrobat/PDF email lists as well on the corresponding Adobe User-to-User forums is that of creation of PDF files. FrameMaker 5.5.6 and 6 have what looks like a convenient feature that is supposed to allow you to create PDF files via simply saving the document as a PDF file. I have gone on record as advising end-users not to use this approach for reliable creation of PDF files from FrameMaker documents under Windows and MacOS with FrameMaker 6 and earlier. Why do I most vociferously offer this advice and why doesn't the problem get fixed? And how SHOULD you create PDF files from FrameMaker?
Isaacs, Dov. InFrame. Design>Publishing>Online>Adobe Acrobat
#29937
Cropping Pages to Highlight Areas in Acrobat
When you receive a PDF that contains, say, an image that is surrounded by text, how do you highlight the image? One way is to export the graphic to an imaging application such as Photoshop, but that involves additional applications and the associated loading times. A great 'quick and dirty' fix here is to use the 'Crop' tool to hide the content that surrounds the image, leaving you with PDF which displays only an image, just the way you wanted it. This tip explains how.
Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2006). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#29931
While Acrobat comes pre-loaded with a selection of stamps, including 'Approved', 'Declined' and 'Accepted', users can also create custom stamps of such things as company logos for use on their PDF documents. Complex or graphically rich stamps can be created or prepared in imaging applications before being added to Acrobat's selection. This tip explains how to create a custom stamp using an existing file.
Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#30111
Customer Profile: Ernest Svenson, PDF for Lawyers
A well-known advocate for the effective use of new technologies in the legal profession, New Orleans-based attorney Ernest Svenson finds Adobe Acrobat and PDF to be highly valued tools in a document-intensive field.
Foss, Kurt. Adobe (2007). Articles>Information Design>Legal>Adobe Acrobat
#31150
Der Weg zum absoluten PDF-Standard in der Technischen Dokumentation
Kein Wunder müssen Technischen Redakteure die ganze Zeit Druckdaten aufbereiten, wenn jede Druckerei ein anderes Datenformat verlangt. Eine Lösung musste her. Ein Standard. Und so ist auch PDF/X-3 ein Thema in der Technischen Dokumentation.
TECOM (2003). (German) Articles>Documentation>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22774
How can I tell if JBIG2 compression was used on my PDF file?
Rosenthol, Leonard. PDFzone (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#18957
Distiller or Writer for Web Docs?
Acrobat Distiller will always produce better quality PDF's than PDFWriter - which is one reason why PDFWriter wasn't part of the standard installation in Acrobat 5 and is completely gone for Acrobat 6. Both tools add metadata to PDF files - PDFWriter only uses the old 'InfoDict' method, while Distiller does both that and the new XML-based metadata.
Rosenthol, Leonard. PDFzone (2003). Design>Publishing>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22780
Can somebody explain what the process of distilling is -- in simple terms?
#24988
Document Hack (A Technical Writer's Journal): The Acrobat and the Illustrator
Using Acrobat, you can make minor edits to a PDF file, but Acrobat documents are very sensitive. Typing a single character can throw several lines off, destroy tables and cause all sort of other troubles. Alternately, it can be relatively uneventful and painless. You will not know until you type in that character.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2004). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22777
E-mailing and Submitting PDF Forms
What’s the easiest way to e-mail a PDF form and have people fill it out?
Sprague, Rich. PDFzone (2004). Design>Information Design>Forms>Adobe Acrobat
#21901
The Form tool as we know has been abandoned. There is now a Field tool which is subdivided into tools for the individual field types.
Wyss, Max. PDFzone (2004). Articles>Information Design>Forms>Adobe Acrobat
#23131
Enhancing Tutorials With Acrobat
Ideas for enhancing tutorial documents using Acrobat features.
McCue, Claudia. PlanetPDF (2004). Design>Document Design>Tutorials>Adobe Acrobat
#14860
Expert Offers Checklist To Consult Before Uploading PDFs
In an era when paperless publishing makes people rush to deadline and take less time in the quality-control realm, we've created a Web full of hastily produced PDFs that are full of errors, take too long to download or are otherwise amateurish in nature.
PDFzone (2000). Design>Publishing>Online>Adobe Acrobat
