Here’s a quick tip for those who want to add a line of text to a page. Using the Typewriter tool limits you to a single font selection. This tip gives you more control over setting font attributes.
Click the link below to play the Flash movie file.
The Acro Short Tips section on my blog is an area where you can find some tips and tricks using Acrobat. These tips are limited to short narrations and video files assembled in Adobe Captivate. Hopefully the videos will improve as soon as I become more familiar with the program.
I’m one of those people who have a hard time living by the rules. I guess that’s why I don’t have a real job. It’s so hard for me to stay within a defined structure and be happy about it. When it comes to each new release of Acrobat, I’m always poking around trying to get the program to do what I want it to do rather than conform to the way Adobe wants me to do it.
Case in point: Again in the newest release of Acrobat, we don’t have a version of Adobe Designer available for the Mac people. So what’s a Mac person to do when it comes time to massage, manipulate, re-design a form that was created in Adobe LiveCycle Designer? Now, Adobe wants us to play by the rules and either wait for Boot Camp to be finalized and buy a new Intel Dual Core machine plus a Windows version of Acrobat or go out and purchase a Windows machine just so we can get into Designer and work on XML forms.
These solutions aren’t going to appeal to all Mac users, so for the people still working on Power PCs and those on Windows who prefer editing forms in Acrobat we need a little workaround to break the rules. Of course breaking the rules typically comes with consequences. The workaround for converting Designer XML forms to Acrobat PDF forms will get you the form fields added in the original Designer form, but translating any scripts and actions will be trashed. You find dynamic attributes of a form created in Designer that is converted to a PDF form lost and the field names will be no less than bizarre. However, for some workflows, converting forms so you can polish and edit the form designs in Acrobat does have its place.
In a pinch, when you need to convert a Designer XML form to an Acrobat PDF form, here’s how to do it:
Adobe Designer 8 supports two different types of forms: Static forms and Dynamic forms. If a form is created as a static form you can easily convert the form in Acrobat 8 to a PDF form.
When the form is extracted, the form fields are converted and you gain access to all the editing tools in Acrobat.
Keep a copy of Acrobat 7 on your computer
If you have a dynamic form to convert to a PDF form, you need to use another method. Unfortunately, you can’t use this method in Acrobat 8. You need to keep a copy of Acrobat 7 on your computer if converting dynamic XML forms to PDF forms is something you intend to do frequently.
Fortunately, for the Mac people, you can keep a copy of Acrobat 7 on your computer that can coexist with Acrobat 8. You may find some installation notes suggesting that you remove all earlier versions of Acrobat from your computer and for Windows you do need to do this, but on the Mac, don’t believe it. I have versions 5, 6, 7, 8, Acrobat Standard 7, and Adobe Reader versions 5, 6, 7, and 8 all running on a new MacPro and I haven’t found any problem working with any version on the Mac. After all, we’re breaking the rules again and breaking this rule doesn’t come with consequences.
On Windows, you have a more complex problem. You can set up your computer to run Acrobat 7 but it’s a much more complex task and not as easy as for the Mac people. If you have an older computer lying around, you’re best off keeping Acrobat 7 on a second computer.
To convert a Designer XML form to a PDF form, follow these steps:
Again, none of the JavaScripts or FormCalc scripts are converted and the field names will have obscure long field names. But all the fields are accessible and the form is editable in Acrobat 7 or 8.
Why can’t I use Create PDF Form Web Page in Acrobat 8?
Acrobat 8 now converts Web page links to PDFs as file attachments. When you select Create PDF From Web Page and select a PDF document, a blank page is created and the PDF you attempt to convert using the Create PDF From Web Page command adds the PDF document as a file attachment. Hence, you need to use Acrobat 7 so the PDF is converted and opens up in the Document pane.
ted
Applies to both Acrobat 7 & 8
Want to stay on top of the blogs here in the Acrobat Users web site (or any other RSS feed you subscribe to)? You can add any RSS feed you want to directly in Acrobat.
Here’s how to do it:
For this example I’ll use the Acrobat Users Web site. On the Acrobat Users Home page down in the lower right corner you see the Subscribe area as shown in Figure 1. Click on the RSS Feeds link and the rss page opens.
Pick out an RSS link. For this example I’ll use my own RSS feed and click on my name in the section under RSS Feeds on the rss feeds page shown in Figure 2. You can choose any one of the links you see in the RSS feeds section to subscribe to the respective feed.
Copy the URL. When you click the link, the feed opens in your Web browser window. Copy the link from the Location Bar in your Web browser as shown in Figure 3.
Open the Review Tracker. Open Acrobat either Acrobat 7 or Acrobat 8 and select Comments > Review Tracker —Acrobat 8, or Comments > Tracker —Acrobat 7. The Tracker window opens.
Subscribe to a service. In Acrobat 7 click the Services button at the top of the Tracker window and select Subscribe from the pull-down menu. In Acrobat 8 click the RSS button on the left side of the Review Tracker and click the plus (+) button at the top of the Review Tracker as shown in Figure 4.
Paste the URL for the RSS Feed you want to subscribe to. The Add Subscription dialog box opens when you add a subscription. Paste the URL you copied into this dialog box.
Edit the URL. By default the pasted URL begins with feed://. Edit feed and change it to http:// as shown in Figure 5.
Click OK and your RSS Feed is listed in the Review Tracker. When you open Acrobat, open the Review Tracker, click on the Refresh button Acrobat 8 or from the pull-down menu Acrobat 7. Your feeds are listed in the Tracker window as shown in Figure 6.
You can add additional feeds to the list and expand or collapse the individual feeds, select topics, etc. Keep up to date with all the blogs on the Acrobat Users Web site right in Acrobat and you won’t need to mess around in your Web browser searching for the important up do date information you want to regularly review.
ted
Post your new feature requests here in the Give It To Me Now (GITMEN) Corner. Tell me what you don’t like about Acrobat and offer suggestions on how to solve problems. Let’s see what kinds of feature requests people have and get them to the Acrobat development team.
In the months ahead you’ll hear much about all the nifty new features added to Adobe Acrobat 8. Many of these features are wonderful and you’ll marvel at some of the improvements added to the program. However, with all the new additions there are some areas, that in my opinion, have been left out of this new release. Now don’t get me wrong; and let me say at the onset of this article, that Acrobat 8 is worth upgrading as soon as it’s made available to you. But with all the great new features, there’s still some room for complaints.
Here’s a list of some of what I had hoped for and what I think needs to be improved:
Toolbar Management
What’s new in Acrobat 8 regarding tools and toolbar management is a new Customize Toolbars window. You can load or remove tools from all the toolbars. This is a great addition to Acrobat and let’s you customize your workspace to a view that suits your workflow.
Where’s the complaint? Unfortunately we don’t have a Save Workspace command. The lack of having a Save Workspace command requires you to change tools and toolbars each time you want to engage in a different kind of editing session. If you work on forms, for example, you’ll want to open the Forms Toolbar, the Advanced Editing Toolbar and the Properties Bar. You may want to load different Zoom tools and Page Display tools. Change to another kind of editing session like comment & review and you won’t need those forms tools. You’ll want the Comment & Review tools. What you have to do is scroll the long list of tools and check off the toolbars and tools you don’t want and check the items you want to open in the Acrobat workspace. What a pain!
PDF Templates
Something I’ve wanted for quite some time is having PDF templates I can access from the Create PDF task button. If I have an invoice, a purchase order form, or some other document I routinely use, I’d like to open the Create PDF task button and access a menu command From Template. A list of my custom templates would appear in a submenu and I could select a template, edit it and when I click Save, I’m prompted in a dialog box to provide a new name. My template would never be overwritten and always accessible from a menu command. Unfortunately, no such thing in Acrobat 8.
Form Fields
Some very nice enhancements for creating Acrobat PDF forms have been added to Acrobat 8. We can distribute forms, collect form data, add bar codes, flatten fields, automatically recognize fields in almost any kind of document converted to PDF, track forms in the Review Tracker, enable PDF forms for Adobe Reader users so they can save form data and add digital signatures, and more.
Where’s the complaint? Just one little item I’ve asked for during several previous beta cycles is the ability to rotate form fields in fixed and arbitrary rotations. We still have options for fixed 90-degree rotations, but I’d like to see fields rotated on an arbitrary axis.
When it comes to calculating field data, we still have the same preset calculations for summing data and multiplying field data. Why can’t we get subtract and divide? It’s just another one of my complaints.
Bookmarks
Managing bookmarks in the Bookmarks panel hasn’t seen any improvement in Acrobat 8. We still have to fiddle-fool around trying to move bookmarks up and down and horizontally to reorder the parent/child relationships —there’s got to be an easier way. What about splitting files on bookmarks, copy/paste bookmarks, merge files on bookmarks? In Acrobat 8, we don’t have it.
800% Article Threads
Have you ever clicked the Hand tool on an article thread and notice your document jump up to an 800%? Who in the world is going to read text in an 800% view? This zoom level is controlled in the Genral Preferences under the Max Fit Visible Zoom area. We’ve always had to edit our preferences in earlier Acrobat viewers to set the default zoom to a more comfortable reading level. Well not only is the default still at an 800% view, Adobe just took out the preference option so you can’t change the zoom level. You’re now stuck in all Acrobat viewers to an 800% zoom if you read an article. Since the product is still in development, I’m not sure if it’s going to appear in the final release. If it does, voice your complaints!
Adobe and Apple
This complaint is focused more at Apple than it is at Adobe. I feel sorry for the engineers at Adobe who try to keep up with Apple developments. This complaint involves the newest release of QuickTime (version 7.1.3). By default Apple decided to turn off a preference option that enables you to view Flash files inside a PDF. All your clients and end users receiving PDFs with embedded Flash files need to be alerted to select QuickTime Preferences from the QuickTime Player menu and click the Advanced button. In the Advanced pane you need to check the Enable Flash checkbox. What a pain! Why can’t Apple play on the same court with Adobe?
We have some very nice features for converting mail messages in MS Outlook and Web pages in MS Internet Explorer to PDF, but this is a Windows thing. Why can’t we get it on the Mac for Apple Mail and Safari… another big pain.
Adobe and Microsoft
The poor Mac people are again left out when it comes to using Microsoft products together with Acrobat on the Mac. Any Mac user out there who has run MS Office programs at one time or another must have believed that Microsoft intentionally messes up the Office applications on the Mac. So many program crashes in MS Word have made Mac people crazy. You’d think that by the time we got to the year 2007 and after all these whiz bang power monster computers are in our workplace we could do something simple like use the PDFMaker in MS Office reliably on the Mac. In Acrobat 8 you can wait hours to see the PowerPoint PDFMaker try to convert a simple slide presentation to PDF until you finally give up and just use the Print to PDF option. Word is no champion either. PDFMaker still runs light years slower on the Mac than it does on Windows. And what about the Adobe PDF menu that the Windows users get so they can change conversion settings and get bookmarks in the resultant PDFs? Can’t we get Microsoft to be a little more cooperative with both Apple and Adobe so the Mac version of the PDFMakers match the Windows versions? What a pain.
UI Changes
First thing you’ll notice is the big User Interface (UI) change in Acrobat 8. By default you’ll see your Acrobat window open minimized and appearing with it’s own set of toolbars. Open another PDF and you see another set of toolbars (sometimes a different set). If you want Acrobat to look like the program you’re familiar with where you only have one set of toolbars and you can open several documents together using the same toolbar set in a maximized view, you have a preference option on Windows to change the UI back to the familiar Acrobat workspace. But this is a Windows only option. Again, the Mac users have been left out. You’re stuck with Acrobat windows detached from the top-level menus and all files appear with individual toolbar sets. I hate this look and it’s made me do ALL my work on my Windows machine. What a pain!
JavaScript Builder
Something else I’ve wanted added to Acrobat is a tool that can help you build JavaScripts. Here we are a good 30+ years since the introduction of the home and business microcomputers and we still have to write cryptic code to produce actions and events. Wouldn’t it be nice to open a window and drag and drop certain items like application alert or application response dialog boxes to a window, set some attributes, click a button and all the JavaScript is automatically created for you? Not so in Acrobat 8. You need to write code in the JavaScript Editor. What a pain.
Adobe LiveCycle Designer
We’ve seen some new additions to Adobe Designer in version 8. You can add PDF Backgrounds, there’s support for importing EPS graphics, a new Table menu has a number of options for creating Tables in a wizard window, you can convert spreadsheets to forms with automatic field recognition, you can distribute forms with enabling features for Reader users, you can customize keyboard shortcuts (a very much needed feature), and more.
What’s left out of Designer? With all the major changes in the UI in Acrobat, Designer is still there with a clunky interface. Being both a design program and a forms creation program, Designer hasn’t given us much in regard to polish for the design phase. You can import PDFs as backgrounds, but you can’t use a grid or snap fields to a grid. The palettes are still overwhelming and a UI like InDesign and GoLive could help free up the overcrowded workspace. What’s really needed for designers who want to create forms is Layers. But you won’t see them in this release. Creating new blank pages is still fixed to a long list of preset page sizes and no options exist for creating a custom page size. Binding fields to data sources is still complex and subform management hasn’t become any easier. The Adobefication of Designer hasn’t yet occurred in version 8.
Also, we still don’t have Designer available on the Mac in version 8.
What can we do?
I’ve made a lot of requests to Adobe engineers during different beta cycles for features and improvements but the engineers don’t usually listen to me because I’m a user of ONE. Adobe tries to satisfy the needs of the many while sometimes at the expense of the needs of the few. I can’t believe I’m alone in some of the features and improvements I want to see in Acrobat and Designer, so I’ve decided to start a new alliance I’m calling the GITMEN alliance —GIVE IT TO ME NOW. Some of us don’t want to wait. We want to see some of the important features needed in Acrobat and Designer as soon as possible.
I’m sure you have some features you’d like to see added to Acrobat that aren’t covered here. Join my GITMEN alliance and post your requests, complaints, and problems here and we’ll see to it that it gets reviewed by some Adobe people. If enough people ask for similar features, it’s quite possible we’ll see these new features added to Acrobat/Designer.
ted
I posted an article on the shortcomings of Acrobat 8 and one of those items I mentioned in that blog post is a feature I wanted to see for creating PDFs from templates. I know everyone who browses the blogs on Acrobat Users is going to want to get Acrobat 8 in your hands soon and you probably can’t wait for the release date to come fast enough —at least if you find some interesting new feature you want to try out. If you’re impatient, I thought I’d add a little tip here you can use now in Acrobat 7 and later when you upgrade to Acrobat 8.
By nature, I’m a lazy person and I don’t like spending time doing anything that can be called work. I’d much rather save time and spend it on the golf course. One of my time consuming tasks that keeps me off the first tee is searching my hard drive looking for files. Where could it be? —in the Acrobat 8 folder, in the last conference session folder, maybe in the conference folder prior to the last event. I could look in the Organizer, but my Organizer list keeps growing and I really can’t find anything quickly there.
What I want and what I’ve asked Adobe for is a command in the Create PDF task button submenu to create a PDF from a template. There are a few files I work with routinely like an invoice form when I can find someone to pay me for hearing my gripes, or maybe a purchase order form, a PDF greeting card, an approval memo, or any other type of document you use routinely in your work. One of my routine files I send out weekly is a greeting card to Thom Parker informing him of the weather in Honolulu while it rains cats and dogs in Portland. Don’t feel sorry for Thom, he calls me when he’s making some fabulous dinner when I’m eating Chef Boyardee and soda crackers.
Now, wouldn’t it be nice if you could select Create PDF > From Template to open a submenu where you could select a file from a dozen or so that you work with on a regular basis? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to create a new file from a form you created in Adobe Designer? Wouldn’t it be nice to click the Save button and know that your original template file won’t be overwritten?
Unfortunately, Adobe didn’t give us this feature in Acrobat 8, despite my pleas. So I developed a little workaround you can use now in Acrobat 7 and continue using the same workaround in Acrobat 8 when you upgrade to the new version.
Like I said, I could put my files in the Organizer, but my Organizer tends to get cluttered and if I open a file in the Organizer I’ll more than likely overwrite my template. To be sure I have my files easily accessible and insure protection against overwriting them, here’s what I do in Acrobat Professional:
Create a template file. In my example I’ll use my weekly greeting card I send to Thom. As an option you can add a Document Title to your file using a name descriptive of the type of template you have. If you don’t have a Document Title in the file, you can select the document by file name.
Open the DocTemplates folder. On Windows the path is: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\DocTemplates\ENU (be sure to change Acrobat 7.0 to Acrobat 8.0 when you upgrade.On the Mac open your Applications folder and open the Acrobat 7.0 folder (8.0 after you upgrade). Click once on the Adobe Acrobat Professional icon being certain to not double click to launch the program. Press the Control key down and click to open a context menu. From the menu items select Show Package Contents. A folder opens with a single folder appearing as Contents.Open this folder and the path isContents\Resources\en.lproj\DocTemplates
Note that if you are using a version of Acrobat other than English replace the en.lproj (ENU on Windows) folder for de.lproj for German (DEU on Windows) or fr.lproj (FRA on Windows) for French, etc.Copy your template to the DocTemplates folder. Inside the DocTemplates folder you’ll find three templates titled template.1, template.2, and template.3. You can create a subfolder in the DocTemplates folder to keep your files together and apart from the default templates installed by Acrobat as I did in Figure 1.
Copy your template file to either the DocTemplates folder or a subfolder inside the DocTemplates folder.
Launch Acrobat. If you had Acrobat open, quit and relaunch the program.
Create a PDF from your template. The DocTemplates files are used for Secure PDF Delivery. Create Security Envelope in Acrobat 8 Select Secure PDF Delivery from the Secure task button pull-down menu. In Acrobat 8, the menu appears as shown in Figure 2.
After selecting the menu command the Create Security Envelope wizard opens. Add a file attachment. The Create Security Envelope was designed for adding file attachments to a secure envelope. We can’t proceed in the wizard unless we add a file attachment, but don’t worry, we’ll delete the attachment later. Click the Add File to Send button shown in Figure 3 and select any file you see in the dialog box that opens.
Select your template. Click the Next button and you’ll see all the templates you added to the DocTemplates folder. Select the template you want to use.
Select a delivery method. In Acrobat 7 you have a choice for emailing your template or completing it manually. Choose the Complete the eEnvelope Manually option. In Acrobat 8 click the Send the envelope later radio button as shown in Figure 4.
Finish. Click Next and Acrobat prompts you to secure the file. Disregard this wizard pane and click Next. A warning dialog box opens. Click Yes to confirm you don’t want to add security and you arrive at the last pane. Click Finish and the file opens in Acrobat.
Remove the File Attachment. We couldn’t progress through the wizard without adding a file attachment. It’s not needed in this example, so I delete the attachment by opening the Attachments panel and click the Delete button after selecting the attachment as shown in Figure 5. Your file is ready to go and when you save the file, Acrobat prompts you for a name and folder location. Your original template file remains intact and ready to use again.
ted
When you want to learn tips, techniques, and/or fundamentals of a software program you have several avenues to explore. You can take an extended studies class at a local college or university, attend a class at a private training institution, or travel to a location to attend a conference, trade show, or expo.
When it comes to trade conferences, many different conferences specialize in a particular application program. For example, if you want to learn more about Adobe Photoshop there’s the Photoshop World Conference in Las Vegas. For Adobe Creative Suite, you find the Adobe Creative Suite Conference in Miami. For Adobe InDesign you find the InDesign Conference in Seattle.
For Adobe Acrobat you have several choices. The PDF Conference produced by Carl Young and one of the people you see here contributing a wealth of content at Acrobat Users started the Acrobat PDF conferences back in 1993. Carl is like the father of PDF Conferences and he’s the number one producer in the world of a conference devoted to Adobe Acrobat and PDF. He produces a marvelous conference in Washington D.C. each year. Unfortunately this year the conference is not being held due to Carl’s involvement with Adobe Max 2006 that is yet, another conference.
Also, in the spring of each year you find the Adobe Acrobat and PDF Conference in Orlando.
Most of these conferences have past for this year. However, one new conference appearing in November in Omaha is another Acrobat conference. As an example of a conference where you can find much learning opportunity, I’ll use The Acrobat PDF Central Conference as an example.
Conference Programs
For those who have never attended a conference, expo, or trade show, let me outline the programs you usually find and offer some opinion for what you can expect. Conferences generally have two to three different tracks with sessions provided by industry experts that are typically one hour to one and a half hours each. You register for the conference and get a program listing of all sessions in each of the individual tracks and make your choices for those you want to attend.
A good many conferences also have a keynote speaker who opens up the first day’s sessions with a keynote address. In addition to the two to three days of sessions you often find a series of pre-conference workshops and post conference workshops. These are additional sessions you pay extra for and can be one half to full day sessions you spend with a noted authority on the subject.
Quite often you find a welcome dinner or social at the evening prior to the first day’s sessions and through the conference week you’ll usually have an opportunity to have lunch with other attendees and the speakers.
PDF Central Conference
At the PDF Central Conference in Omaha in November you find the program following the outline I mentioned above. The conference starts out with a series of pre-conference workshops, a social on the eve of the fist day, two days of sessions, lunches during the two session days, and follows with a day of post conference workshops.
The speaker lineup for this conference is very impressive. A number of speakers attending this conference are international authorities on Adobe Acrobat and PDF.
What can you expect by attending a trade conference?
At first glance the price of a conference appears to be high. You can pay $695 to $995 for attending a conference. Add the travel and lodging and the price seems a bit hefty. However, if you get the most out of your conference attendance you can often gain as much, if not more knowledge than attending many local college or private training classes while paying just about the same amount of money for a series of classes that equals conference expenses. This is especially true when you attend a conference at the beginning of a new software upgrade.
If you fork over the money for a conference, travel, and lodging, then you’ll want to get the most out of the time you spend at the conference. For getting the most out of a conference, here are some tips you might consider:
I hope to see you at the PDF Central Conference in Omaha on November 7 and 8 this year. If you do attend, be certain to stop by and say hi.
ted
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