Microsoft Word—Adobe Photoshop—Firefox—when you think of a piece of software, it’s generally easy to figure out what to do with it. Adobe Acrobat, however, is unique in that it has many functional areas utilized by a diverse range of users. A print designer uses Acrobat to display page proofs and run preflight checks; an engineer or architect uses Acrobat to hold and organize models, as well as product or project documentation; a dentist uses Acrobat to store patient records and scanned x-rays.
The scope and depth of Acrobat is amazing, but it boils down to the fact that fundamentally you are handling information. If you are dealing with information on an ongoing basis, Acrobat can assist you with its wide range of tools.
Rather than trying to qualify the program in a single word, let’s consider the ways in which Acrobat functions. Acrobat is designed to create PDF content using material from a wide range of sources; combine content from source files or selected subsegments of existing PDF files; collaborate with others using commenting and review; add interactive content and multimedia using Flash; and so much more.
In this book, I have assembled techniques that I use and experiment with on a regular basis. My goal is to show you what Acrobat can do, and how to find tools and use processes that can help you work smarter and faster.
In this first chapter, you’ll see what makes up the program’s interface, learn how to look at your document, and discover ways to organize your PDF files and their contents.
When you open Acrobat 9 Pro, the default program includes several elements (Figure 1). You can configure the Acrobat layout in a variety of ways by adjusting the panel groupings and settings:
Menu items. The Main menu across the top of the program contains common menu items like File and Edit, as well as Acrobat 9 Pro menu items such as Advanced and Document.
Toolbars. Acrobat contains a variety of toolbars; most items found in toolbars are available as menu commands as well.
Task buttons. You can access a variety of tasks and functions for a specific type of work, such as creating a PDF or signing a document, using the task buttons.
Document message bar. Look for a message bar that lets you know if the document contains certain types of content, such as form fields or signatures, below the toolbars.
Navigation pane. The icons along the left side of the program window make up the Navigation pane. The functions available from the Navigation pane let you manage and control the content of your PDF document.
Document pane. An open PDF document displays in the Document pane. The document’s page size and scroll bars frame the bottom and right sides of the Document pane.
Acrobat 9 offers a Web-based Help system. In addition to the usual sorts of information you’d expect to find in a Help file, such as how to use the program features and where to find shortcuts, the Help system includes links to online resources such as Adobe Video Workshop, where you can view videos on Acrobat and other Adobe software.
For in-depth information, use the main Help feature:
Choose Help > Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended Help or press the F1 key. The Adobe Help Viewer opens in a browser window.
Use the navigation menu in the left frame to make your way through the files.
You can choose from two types of search options—Contents or Search—depending on what you are looking for and on your preferred method of working.
The Adobe Help Viewer shows the Contents menu (Figure 2) when it opens. The content is arranged in a hierarchy. Each plus sign (+) next to a topic means subtopics are available: Click the + to open a nested item list. If a topic name displays a minus sign (–), it has nested content already displayed. Click an item to display its contents in the main frame of the browser window.
One of the best ways to save space, and your eyesight, is to control what tools you display on the screen. It is possible to open enough toolbars to fill a good portion of the screen, leaving little room for the actual document. These techniques help you “de-clutter” your screen:
If you have opened a number of toolbars and want to return to the default set, choose View > Toolbars > Reset Toolbars. Acrobat closes the extras and the layout reverts to the default toolbars in the default locations.
Even using only the default toolbars and task buttons, you may find it confusing to figure out what you have to work with. Move your pointer over the hatched vertical line at the left edge of a toolbar to display the toolbar’s name; move your pointer over a tool to view its name and a description of how to use it in a tooltip (Figure 3a).
Move your pointer over the hatched vertical line and drag to pull a toolbar from its docked position. When you release the mouse, the toolbar is floating on the screen. Drag the toolbar back to the toolbar area and release the mouse to dock it again.
You can further control your use of screen real estate by setting how the labels are displayed. Choose View > Toolbars > Show Button Labels and then select the Default, All, or No button label option.
Task buttons work slightly differently. You can’t drag an individual task button off the taskbar (as you can with individual tools on toolbars); if you try, you’ll remove the entire taskbar. As with other toolbars, add and remove Task buttons in the More Tools dialog.
Rather than using the Main menu, save one step when changing toolbars. Right-click (Control-click) the toolbar well to display the same options available from the menus.
Right-click (Control-click) the toolbar well and choose More Tools to open the More Tools dialog (Figure 3b).
You can define a number of preferences that help you get to work faster. Some preferences get you into the program faster; others show you what you are working with more quickly.
Choose Edit > Preferences (Acrobat > Preferences) to open the Preferences dialog. You see a long Categories list in the left pane of the dialog; clicking an option displays a range of settings in the right pane of the dialog. Click Documents in the Categories list to display the Startup options in the right pane of the dialog (Figure 4a).
The Open Settings preferences are listed at the top of the window, followed by Save Settings, PDF/A View Mode, and Examine Document preferences.
Here are a few hints for selecting options:
Do you like to see the same thing each time you open a file? Select the “Restore last view settings when reopening documents” check box.
If you work with more than five documents on a regular basis, change the value shown in “Documents in recently used list” from its default of 5. Click the File menu heading to see the list at the bottom of the menu and quickly select the document you want to open.
If your workflow involves preparing files for archival purposes, choose Only for PDF/A mode from the “View documents in PDF/A mode” pop-up menu. Your files are automatically evaluated and tested.
If your workflow involves sensitive material such as legal documents, choose the Examine Document options to evaluate the content of a file for hidden and other sensitive material before closing or before e-mailing documents.
Click Page Display in the options listed in the left pane of the Preferences dialog. You can set some page preferences to get up to working speed faster:
Leave the “Use page cache” check box selected (Figure 4b). The page cache is a buffer area. If you cache the pages, as you display one page the next page in a document is read and placed in a buffer area until you are ready to view it. Pages load faster, and the faster load time is particularly noticeable if you are working with image-intensive or interactive documents.
Deselect the “Show large images” option if your computer has a slow redraw speed. On older computers, images take a lot of time to draw on the screen. Each time you move the image means more time waiting for the image to redraw again.
Deselect the Rendering preferences—text, line art, and images—if your computer is particularly slow. Deselecting the smoothing may save some time in displaying your documents, although you sacrifice some of the clarity and crispness of the content for display speed.
If you work with different-sized pages often and need to know the page sizes, choose “Always show document page size” in the Page Content and Information settings.
When you have completed setting and changing the preferences, click OK to close the Preferences dialog and apply your settings.
Acrobat 9 contains a nifty feature called the Organizer. Use the Organizer to—you guessed it—organize your PDF files. Click the Organizer button on the File toolbar or choose File > Organizer > Open Organizer.
The Organizer opens in a separate window and displays three panes (Figure 5). You can drag the splitter bars between the panes to resize each one as you are working. Click an option in the Categories pane to display its list of PDF files in the Files pane; click a file in the Files pane to display its content in the Pages pane.
The Categories pane uses a hierarchy of folders. There are three types of categories: History, your computer’s folders (to which you can add favorites), and Collections.
History works like the History function in your Web browser. Select a time frame from the History listing to show the PDF files you have opened during that time frame in the Files pane. To clear the history, select the item in the History listing and click the Clear History button at the bottom of the Files pane.
To add a Favorite Place, click Add a Favorite Place
at the bottom of the Organizer window. Locate the folder you want to add in the resulting dialog, and click OK.To add a collection, right-click (Control-click) the Collections label and choose options to name the collection and add files. Right-click (Control-click) an existing collection to add or delete files.
In the Files pane, information displayed about each listed document includes basic details. An unprotected document shows a thumbnail; a document containing security or one opened from a Web browser shows only a PDF document icon. The default listing is by filename; you can click the Sort by down arrow to choose other sorting options, such as keywords, the document’s title, or the author.
The file selected in the Files pane is shown in the Pages pane. Use the – and + buttons to change the magnification of the view, or drag the slider to show the file’s content.
Name your collections to keep track of your work, and delete a collection when you are finished with a project.
Choose File > Organizer > Collections to access your collections’ contents from the main program menu.
The History contents are also available in the File menu. Choose File > History and one of the date options. The History command is conveniently listed above the last documents opened in the File menu.
One feature we all use at one time or another is the dependable Search function. Acrobat 9 offers different methods to search, including through the Find toolbar or using the Search window.
Use the Find toolbar to quickly search an open document. To access the toolbar, use the Ctrl+F (Command+F) shortcut keys; or right-click (Control-click) the toolbar well and choose Find. Type the word or phrase in the field. To customize the search term, click the pull-down arrow and choose one or more options from the list (Figure 6a). Then, press Enter (Return) to show the first match on the visible page. Click Find Next 
to highlight the next match; click Find Previous 
to return to a prior result.
If you need to track down content in multiple folders, or are searching for a particular phrase or group of words for redaction (described in #62, “Redacting Content”), use the Search function. Choose Edit > Search or use the Shift+Ctrl+F (Shift+Command+F) shortcut keys to open the Search window (Figure 6b).
Tip
Click Arrange Windows at the top of the Search window to lock the Search and Acrobat windows into place.
Follow these steps to conduct a search:
Type the word or words you want to find in the first field. You can’t search using wildcards such as (*) or (?).
Select the file or folder you want to search by clicking the appropriate radio button. Choose from the currently active or selected document or all the files in a specified folder.
Choose search options by selecting the check boxes. You can select whole words, request case-sensitive results, and include bookmarks and comments.
Click Search. When the search is finished, the results and their locations appear by filename in the Results area of the Search window (Figure 6c).
You can see the number of instances of the word occurring in the set of files you searched, along with the number of documents containing the word. Click the box to the left of the file path to open a list of the results’ locations, and then hover your mouse over a result listing to display the document page number.
Click a result in the Results area. Acrobat obligingly loads the document you selected (if it is not already displayed in the Document pane) and highlights the term on the document for you.
Sorting by filename isn’t the only way to view results. To reorder the results, choose a sort method from the Sort by pop-up menu. You can choose from Modification Date, Location, and Relevance Ranking.
You can fine-tune a search using the Advanced Search options, or search for content such as keywords or metadata. Click the Use Advanced Search Options link at the bottom of the basic Search window to display additional searching parameters. To search the text in the document, type the word or words in the “What word or phrase would you like to search for?” field. Search using any combination of words or phrases, or you can use a Boolean query. Search using content other than a document’s text, including bookmarks, attachments, and indexes. (Refer to #8, “Building and Applying an Index,” to see how indexes are used.) A search can be conducted in a folder, a PDF Portfolio, or even a PDF Portfolio’s attachments (check out Chapter 4 to learn about Portfolio creation).
Figure 7a shows the Search window for a search based on keywords rather than text in the document. You can use up to three additional search parameters.
Use the pop-up menus below the “Use these additional criteria” label. Click the pop-up menu on the left to display a list of options, as shown in the figure. Select the search option you desire, and then click the pop-up menu on the right and select a modifier. Finally, type the search term in the field, such as the keyword you wish to search for. A green check mark displays in the check box to the left of the criteria’s fields.
Click the Search button to search the document properties for the files in the selected folder. Acrobat returns results that contain all additional search criteria only. You can remove criteria by clicking the green check mark to deselect it.
When you create a PDF, technical data that is part of the source document is converted along with the text and images you see on the page. You can add more types of data from within Acrobat by modifying the Document Properties.
Open the document you want to alter, and then choose File > Properties, or use the shortcut Ctrl+D (Command+D) (Figure 7b).
Enter the additional information you want to use for searching and organizing in the appropriate fields. If you are working with images, clicking the Additional Metadata button opens the Document Metadata for [filename] dialog to add further information about the image.
Click OK to close the Properties dialog. Then, save the document to save the information you added in the dialog.
For a large collection of documents, save searching time by building an index and attaching it to the files. Once your files are collected in a single location, follow these steps:
Choose Advanced > Document Processing > Full Text Index with Catalog to open the Catalog dialog, and click New Index. The Index Definition dialog opens (Figure 8a).
Add information to the dialog to name and describe the index, and specify the folders you want to include.
Power Indexing
Save time by setting preferences for indexing. Choose Edit > Preferences (Acrobat > Preferences) and click Catalog in the left column. In the Catalog preferences, choose the same options as those shown in Figure 8b in the Options dialog and click OK to close the Preferences dialog. The next time you build an index, any options you chose in the Preferences, such as stop words, are automatically applied to the index.
Click Options to display ways to either add or remove content from the index in the Options dialog (Figure 8b). Choose to exclude numbers, add custom properties, use stop words, or specify the tags to include, described in the sidebar “Getting Ready for Indexing.”
Click OK to dismiss the Options dialog, and then click the Build button at the bottom of the Index Definition dialog. The collection is processed and the results displayed in the Build dialog. Click Close to dismiss the Build dialog.
To see your index in action, follow these steps:
Choose Edit > Search to open the Search window, and click Use Advanced Search Options.
Choose Select Index from the Look in pop-up menu. The Index selection dialog opens.
Click Add to locate and select indexes from your computer. Choose the index you want to attach from the list.
Click OK to attach the index or indexes to your PDF.