Digit – Thinkdigit Technology Guides | Technology News Reviews |Free Downloads | Video

Adobe Acrobat

Posted on 01-09-2008

Set initial view
It is possible to completely define the way in which a PDF document is seen when it is opened. This extends to the navigation options available, the zoom level, the page number, the layout, the window and interface options available. Go to File > Properties > Initial View. Tweak the options according to your preferences and click OK.

Password Protection
Password protection of your PDF file ensures that the PDF can only be opened by the intended recipient of the file. Password protection can also be used to prevent users from printing or editing the document. These settings can be further tweaked to allow only low resolution printing, and varying degrees of editing. To password protect your document, go to Advanced > Security > Encrypt With Password. A prompt will appear asking if you are sure you want to change the security settings. Click on Yes. Select Encrypt all document contents, check Require password to open document, and enter the password in the “document open password” field. If you want control on the permissions to print and edit the document, check Restrict editing and printing. Provide the password for changing these settings. Make sure Enable copying of text, images, and other content is unchecked. Click on OK. A prompt will appear asking you to confirm the passwords you have entered. Another prompt states clearly that not all third-party programs respect the security settings in the PDF file. Third party software for bypassing these security settings are easily available.

Related Stories:

Viewing History
Acrobat keeps a record of which pages the user has viewed. This is helpful if you are skimming through a large report, lots of data, or viewing documents like a dictionary or encyclopedia. It is possible to head back to a particular page you want to go through again. To do this, go to View > Previous View or Next View. To add the previous view and next view buttons on the toolbar, right-click on the toolbar. A context menu will appear. Select More Tools. Scroll down till you see the options for Page Navigation Toolbar. Check the Previous View and Next View check boxes.

RSS To PDF
Acrobat has a feedreader that you can use to convert RSS feeds into PDF documents. This option is available by default in Acrobat 8, but strangely enough disabled by default in Acrobat 9. To change this, go to Edit > Preferences scroll down to the Tracker category and under RSS, check Enable RSS Feed In Tracker. Now copy the URL of the feed onto your clipboard. Then go to Comments > Track Reviews > RSS. Click on ‘Subscribe to RSS feeds’. A prompt will open where the feed URL will already be pasted. If not paste the URL in this field, and click OK. A number of entries will appear, choose which ones you want to save into a PDF and click OK.

Clipboard To PDF
Acrobat has a simple option to convert data in the clipboard to a PDF file. Content like images and hyperlinks will be preserved. To do this, first copy the data then, go to File > Create PDF > From Clipboard. Go to File > Save As and save the file.

Scan Documents
To scan documents and then convert them into a PDF file, go to File > Create PDF > From Scanner > Custom Scan. There are some other options available here, like a colour scan and grayscale scan. Select the scanner connected to your computer in the Scanner drop down box. In the window that opens, check the Prompt For Scanning More Pages option. Select the Output option as New PDF Document. Check Make Searchable (Run OCR). OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, and this allows the text in the scanned documents to be manipulated like text although it is an image. Press the Scan button. After the scanning is done, there will be a prompt asking you if there are more pages you wish to scan. Choose Scan More Pages or Scan Is Complete.

Split Document
Acrobat has a nifty little feature that allows you to break up a large document into several smaller documents. Go to Document > Split Document. From here, you can split the document into pieces of a certain number of pages, a certain file size, or according to top level bookmarks. Tweak the Output options according to your convenience and click OK.

Combining Files Into A PDF
It is possible to combine many files into a single PDF in Acrobat. These files can include files in various formats, like .doc, .rtf and .pdf files. To do this, go to File > Combine > Merge Files Into A Single PDF. Choose the Single PDF option as against the PDF Portfolio. Go to Add Files > Add Files or drag and drop files from explorer into the box. It is possible to add entire folders by choosing Add Files > Add Folder. Click on individual files and move them up or down the list to establish a suitable order. The file size settings allows for three compression presets. The size of the file will affect the quality. Choose a low file size to distribute by e-mail if you are combining a lot of files together. Click on Combine Files.

Transitions
Acrobat has a feature that allows for a transition between pages. This feature can be useful to make a PowerPoint like presentation from your PDF document. There are no animation options for text or objects however. To use this feature, go to Advanced > Document Processing > Page Transitions. Select the transition from the drop down box. There are thirteen transitions available, and a random transition. Next select the direction of the transition. There are various options available depending on the type of transition. Next select the speed of the transition. There are three speeds; fast, slow and medium. Check AutoFlip if you want the page to turn automatically, you can specify the period in seconds if you choose this option. If AutoFlip is left unchecked, the transition will occur when the user changes the page. Apply to All Pages In Document. Alternatively, you can specify a page range. Click on OK.

More Recently Used Documents
Acrobat shows a default of five documents in its history. If you are working with a lot of documents, and want to quickly access them from the file menu, it is necessary to have more recent documents to show up in the history. Go to Edit > Preferences. Head over to Documents category. Under Open Settings, there will be an option next to Documents In Recently Used List. Change it to 10 or 15, as per your convenience.

Watermark Documents
A watermark can be a useful identification marker. While there are many ways to bypass this measure, a watermark identifies the origin of the document to at least a limited extent. Additionally, a watermark can be used to simply label a file, say ‘incomplete’ or ‘confidential’. It is also useful for putting the logo of an organization in the background. Go to Document > Watermark > Add. A window will appear with many options. Choose either a Text or a Document watermark. Acrobat supports only JPG, PDF and BMP files for the watermark option. Adjust the appearance and position options as necessary. The opacity option changes the transparency of the watermark, which is useful if you have the watermark appear on top of the page.

Secret Watermark
It is possible to change the watermark settings so that the watermark appears only when the document is printed, and not when it is viewed on screen. Go to Document > Watermark > Add. Click on Appearance Options. Check Show When Printing, and uncheck Show When Displaying On Screen. Click on OK.

Export All Images
There is an easy way to extract all the images in a pdf document. Go to Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images. You will be prompted to give a file name for the images. Click OK. By default, this feature excludes very small images. To change this, go to Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images, then click Settings. Under Extraction, change the ‘Exclude images smaller than’ drop down box to ‘No limit’. Then click OK.

Measuring Tool
The measuring tool can be very helpful when working with maps, scale blueprints or design drawings. It can also be useful to process a document before it is sent for printing. Go to Tools > Analysis > Measuring Tool. A small toolbox for the measuring tool will appear. Click on any point, drag to another point, and by default the distance will be measured. To change the scale, right-click while using the measuring tool, and click on Change Scale Ratio. From here, set 1 inch = 1 meter, or any scale you prefer. By default, Measurement Markup is enabled. This leaves the marks of your measurements on the pdf. To disable this, right-click and select Disable Measurement Markup. On the measurement tool toolbox, there is also a perimeter measurement tool and an area measurement tool.

Snapshot And Loupe
Acrobat has a snapshot tool to copy content onto the clipboard. Go to Tools > Select And Zoom > Snapshot Tool. To copy the entire page, just click once anywhere on the page. To copy a portion of the page, or an image, click and drag a rectangle around the area you want to capture. To examine details of a picture or a drawing, there is a very useful Loupe tool under Tools > Select And Zoom > Loupe Tool. This tool is equivalent to holding a magnifying glass over the PDF document. The zoom settings and the size of the magnified display can be tweaked according to needs.