Vikki Dawson June 1, 2001

Adobe Acrobat is a software application that can help you create cross platform documents as well as compacting everything in your documents into one file. You then don't need to zip masses of files up for distribution. The only thing the end user needs is the free Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded from Adobe.

For this review I've used a web page for conversion to pdf format. It was as simple as using the File menu. File>Open Web Page>Browse>Download. My web page was loaded into Acrobat ready for conversion. But I didn't convert it immediately as Acrobat allows you to do all kinds of things to enhance your final file.

The navigation pane on the left can be set to be open or closed. On the thumbnails tab all of your images are shown and they are actually shortcuts to the actual images in the document like a table of contents of images.

From the file menu you have many options for how your pdf file works. I'll take you through some of the dialogs below.

The above dialog is for opening web pages. This option allows you to open a web page in Acrobat and convert it to a pdf file. You browse your hard drive for the file and then click the Download button.

The Document Properties option from the File menu allows you to add and change information about your pdf document.

From the Summary option you can edit the title, subject, author, keywords and binding of your final document.

See the fonts used in the document from the Document Properties option which is accessed from the file menu.

The above three dialogs give you much information about your document.

Use the Security option from the File menu to set the security for your pdf document.

As you can see from above you can set your pdf document to require a password to open the document or just to allow changing of the document. You have options for encryption levels, whether to allow end users to print, change, extract data and more giving you a lot of control of how your document is used.

From the File menu you will find an option for batch processing files.

Acrobat is so easy to use because most of it's dialogs are fairly self explanatory. Of course, Adobe has included terrific online help which explains in detail everything you'll need to know to use Adobe Acrobat. Below are screenshots to show more of the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat.

I found the attachment tool a very useful tool for attaching files that Acrobat does not recognize. However, when distributing pdf files with Acrobat attachments the end user must also have Acrobat Writer to be able to access the attachments.

Acrobat also compacts files. When creating a pdf file from a web page with lots of images I found the pdf file to be smaller than the total of the files on the page. This is helpful for email and web distribution as well as giving confidence that you won't accidentally forget to add a file which is easily done when zipping a lot of files for distribution. Acrobat takes care of all that for you. You have only one file to distribute and it looks the same for everyone. No worries about what browser they are going to use or what operating system. Acrobat Reader runs on Windows, Mac and Unix systems allowing you a consistent look and feel without a lot of hassle.

Add signatures and comments to your documents which are accessible from the Comments and Signatures tabs in the left navigation pane.

Acrobat allows you to customize a document once and distribute to many different systems without losing the look and feel of your document.

There are many other ways to use Acrobat as well besides using the application stand alone. You can create pdf documents from within many other software applications. For example in Microsoft Office you simple click the "Convert to Adobe PDF" button on the toolbar. In other applications you use the Print command to print your current document to Adobe PDF format. Some Adobe applications allow you to Save As or Export to Adobe PDF. It just couldn't be simpler.

You can save your PDF files to other formats allowing you to re-purpose your documents. You can also save individual pages from your PDF file as JPG, PNG or TIFF. You can extract just the images from a PDF document for editing or whatever reason. (Keep in mind these options for changing a PDF file are only available if the security of the document allows you to.)

All of the above and many more options and advantages make Adobe Acrobat a very valuable tool to have in your tool box. Run on over to Adobe and check it out.

Copyright 2001, Vikki Dawson, All Rights Reserved