Acro bytes by Kurt Foss

First, welcome to the inaugural posting to my “Acro bytes” blog. My aim is to regularly share a variety of information and insights, which will include highlighting particularly interesting or innovative applications of Adobe Acrobat and PDF. As we also hope to use the site blogs to encourage dialogue with and among the community, I’ll periodically use my blog to seek your feedback on relevant topics you’d like to see explored, and other times to request your input on specific Acrobat and PDF-related experiences you’ve had for article ideas we’re developing.

Today I’ll start with the latter: I’m interested in hearing about any keyboard shortcuts in Acrobat you find especially useful — for accessing menu commands and navigational features without using a computer mouse. You can either post them below as comments or, if you prefer, e-mail me privately and briefly explain your favorite shortcut.

In the various Acrobat program menus, many keyboard shortcuts appear next to the command names. The Acrobat Help document includes a section detailing the use of shortcuts, including tables that list commands by the type of functionality they each trigger. Note that there are some differences by computer platform, including some that work only on one platform.

And there are some shortcuts you’ll probably only discover by tinkering.

Here’s an example: In Acrobat 7 Professional, go to

File > Create PDF

and you will see several options for ways you can create PDF files — by converting a local file or multiple files, from scanner input, from a Web page (aka Web Capture) or from content stored in your electronic clipboard.

There are times when you might like to add a blank page to a PDF document, but there’s no obvious way to simply create such an item from scratch. But there is a not-so-obvious, yet simple way to accomplish that.

Try this:

Hold down the Shift key while choosing the same File > Create PDF menu item. You’ll see an additional option — From Blank Page — listed. Choose that and a temporary page opens, which you can save as a blank PDF document and use as desired.

Now it’s your turn: What’s *your* favorite Acrobat shortcut, and why?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 11:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.