Acrobat Support

Examining Fonts in a PDF File

Mitch — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:15:23 +0000

If you receive a PDF file from someone else, you may want to check on the document’s fonts. Acrobat can tell us which fonts are used in the PDF and if they’re embedded or not. Here’s how:

Open a PDF in Acrobat
Go to File > Properties
Click on Fonts
Here Acrobat lists all the fonts used in the document. If a font is embedded, that information will also be listed next to the font name.
If you want to unembed fonts Acrobat can do this with the PDF Optimizer. This option is located under Advanced > PDF Optimizer > Fonts.

Export PDF Tables to Microsoft Excel

Mitch — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:16:05 +0000

You can easily convert tables in a PDF file to Excel. This is generally a good idea if you’re making extensive changes to the tables. To do so:

Open your PDF file that contains a table
Choose the select tool by going to Tools > Select and Zoom > Select Tool
Highlight the table in your PDF file
Right click (or control click on Mac) on the selected table and choose Open Table in Spreadsheet.
Microsoft Excel (or your default spreadsheet program) will open showing you the table
You should note that the table formatting will not always be identical. This depends on how the PDF was originally made.
Instead of choosing Open Table in Spreadsheet, you can also pick Copy as Table if you want to paste the table into Word or another program. You can also choose Save as Table, which will save the table as a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file that can be opened with Excel.

How to Scan and OCR Concurrently

Mitch — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:41:07 +0000

If you have a scanner available and Adobe Acrobat, you can scan and use the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process at the same time. OCR converts your scanned image into editable text. Here’s how:

Open Acrobat and go to File > Create PDF > From Scanner
Select your scanner from the Scanner dropdown menu
Under Text Recognition check the box for Make Searchable
Click Options and for PDF Output Style choose Formatted Text and Graphics. This will give you the most flexibility later.
Click OK and then Scan. Now your new PDF is searchable and editable.

Printing Comments in Acrobat

Mitch — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:04:51 +0000

Acrobat has a lot of great commenting tools, but what good are they if you can’t print them out? If you find that your comments are not printing just follow these easy steps:

Open a PDF with comments
Go to File > Print
For the Comment and Forms option choose Document and Markup
You’ll see that the Preview Window now shows your comments and if you click Print you will now have a complete document with comments.

Acrobat “Not Responding”

Mitch — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:11:52 +0000

If you find that Acrobat is freezing or giving you a “not responding” message when you start the program and you have Windows Vista, this may be caused by Live OneCare, Microsoft’s Antivirus software.

For this situation, we recommend opening up OneCare and running the updates. For more info on the update process visit the OneCare site.

Introduction to Acrobat Connect

Mitch — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:00:14 +0000

You may have noticed the Start Meeting button in Acrobat 8 on the main toolbar. This button brings up Acrobat Connect, a paid online collaboration tool from Adobe. Acrobat Connect allows you to meet with a group of people online and features live video, teleconferencing, and the ability to share a view of your desktop or any application with everyone in your meeting. You can also share notes, chat with coworkers, and mark up the screen as you’re presenting.

For a free trial of Acrobat Connect

Acrobat 3D and CAD Software

Mitch — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:00:29 +0000

Acrobat 3D integrates with various CAD software products and lets you convert CAD files into compressed PDF files. After converting to PDF, CAD designs can be more easily shared (much smaller file size) and marked up using Acrobat’s commenting tools. Acrobat 3D also has security features like password protection. PDF security isn’t perfect, but it does act as a theft deterrent for your CAD designs. Users can choose who can open, print, and change CAD designs in PDF format.

Acrobat 8 error “the Organizer database is damaged…”

Mitch — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:00:53 +0000

If you are getting a damaged Organizer error message when using Acrobat then simply follow these steps to remedy the issue:

Close Acrobat
On Windows XP, go to C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\8.0
Delete the organizer70 folder
Open Acrobat and go to Help > Repair Acrobat Installation
After the repair is finished, you should have a new organizer folder and no more error messages.

Acrobat 8.1.2 Update

Mitch — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:48:54 +0000

Acrobat has a new update available. The 8.1.2 update fixes PDF form issues, security issues, and a few other minor bugs.

To get the update just open Acrobat and go to Help > Check for Updates and follow the prompts. You’ll need to download 8.1.1 first if you don’t have it. To check your version of Acrobat, open the program and go to Help > About Acrobat (or Acrobat > About Acrobat on Mac).

Introduction to Mail Merge

Mitch — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:00:39 +0000

If you have Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word, you can save a lot of time using the mail merge feature. This feature lets you create PDF form letters, where each letter has a different address without manually typing in everything. Some users find Acrobat’s mail merge process overly complicated. For those people, I would suggest simply using Word’s built-in mail merge. Of course, the final output won’t be in PDF form. For more specific mail merge directions see the Acrobat Help.