Tips & Tricks for Creative Professionals and Technical Writers using the Adobe Creative Suite & the Adobe Technical Communications Suite

by David R. Mankin

By now, many of you have discovered the most amazing new feature of Acrobat 9 Professional – the PDF Portfolio.  The PDF Portfolio is a unique and exciting type of file that allows you to share and distribute ANY type of file – not just PDFs.  These files are wrapped up in a beautiful and functional PDF wrapper, which is bathed in Flash!  No need to shy away, however.  No Flash knowledge is required.  Acrobat 9 does all the fancy work for you.  In Acrobat 8, we were pretty excited about PDF Packages, but version 8 automatically converted your files to PDF format in the “wrapping” process.   Click here to see a demo video of the PDF Portfolio creation process.

Did you catch the part where I got to choose from those four pre-set Layout options?  Those four dazzled me when I first installed Acrobat 9 and began making PDF Portfolios.  Before long, though, I found myself wanting more choices & functionality.  Fortunately, Adobe came to the rescue with new and FREE PDF Portfolio Layouts.  If you would like to add to your PDF Portfolio Layout choices, visit http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4006 and download the appropriate file for your operating system.

Adobe actually has you download a PDF Portfolio!  Included are folders for the various languages in the release, and specific directions on how to install the new layout options.

Once installed, you’ll be able to explore and utilize your original 4 layouts, plus the new enhanced ones.  There’s nothing ordinary about any PDF Protfolio, but yours can now be truly extraordinary.

by David R. Mankin

You want a big sign!  Nothing permanent, but you’d like to make a quick, VERY large printout.  Your printer, however, can’t accommodate paper larger than legal size.  Let me show you how to print a “normal-sized” document to larger proportions… using Acrobat!

The print dialog box in Acrobat is one of the most flexible and thorough I’ve ever seen.  If you think about it, it would have to be feature-rich, since professional print shops accept PDF files as press-ready media.  The secret to printing a PDF file to a desired size is in the Page Scaling dropdown.  To print an 8.5 X 11 inch page to poster size, you’ll change the Page Scaling option to Tile all pages.  Next, select a desired Tile Scale percentage.  In my example, I chose 200%.  The print preview on the right shows exactly how the pages will be imposed onto (in this example) 6 letter-sized pages.  I kept the default Overlap of 0.005 inches, but you can dial in whatever you’d like.  All that’s left is to print and assemble your pages like a puzzle – either with tape, glue stick, etc.  That was easy.  You can use the page scaling options to print multiple pages per sheet of paper as well.

So it seems you can either save the environment by printing a document on fewer sheets, or ruin our planet for future generations by making posters out of letter-sized PDF files.  So much power in your hands from one dialog box!

Who knew?  If that type of print page scaling flexibility came as a surprise, you might want to consider signing up for some training. Learn what PDF technology is all about… and how to use Acrobat 9 to create, edit & enhance your PDF files.  I offer training classes in Adobe Acrobat 9, either in your facility or online.

by David Mankin

It’s a good bet that you’ve used a crop tool in a variety of software applications for many years. The crop tools have typically looked the same, regardless of the program.

You’ve probably come to expect that the cropping process is a rectangular trimming of an area. Fair enough… unless you’re working with Acrobat’s Crop Tool!

Acrobat’s Crop Tool resides on the Advanced Editing Toolbar. Yes, you can crop a PDF page by defining a rectangle with this tool (click and drag). Pressing the [Enter] key or double-clicking in your defined rectangle opens up the crop dialog box. This is where you can dial in exact dimensions for your cropping task for mathematical accuracy.

What few people stop to realize is that Acrobat’s crop tool does a bit more than merely crop pages. In fact, it will allow you to define aCropBox, ArtBox, TrimBox and BleedBox. Here are descriptions of each possibility:

• CropBox: Defines the boundary for the contents of a page when it’s displayed or printed. If not otherwise specified (for example, in the PDF settings), the crop boundary determines how page contents are positioned on the output medium.
• ArtBox: Defines the meaningful content of the page, including white space.
• TrimBox: Defines the finished dimensions of the page after trimming.
• BleedBox: Defines the clipping path when the page is printed professionally to allow for paper trimming and folding. Printing marks may fall outside the bleed area.

The bottom of the Crop Dialog Box holds another powerful surprise… the ability to Change Page Size. Explore and see what it can do.

How much time have you spent looking for a PDF file you worked on a while ago? Like most other applications, Acrobat’s File Menu lists your most recently opened files.  By default, you see the last five documents opened, but that sixth one will require some fishing to locate.  This is an adjustable value, by the way.  To change the number of files listed in your recently used list, you can go to Edit > Preference (or Acrobat > Preferences on the Mac) and make the adjustment there.

There is a much more robust feature that Adobe has given us, and it’s been there for years.  It’s called Organizer.  Organizer is a child application of Acrobat, so it cannot be launched on its own – it must be opened from within the Acrobat interface.  To launch Organizer, click on File > Organizer > Open Organizer.

The Organizer’s Interface is divided into 3 vertical panels.  The left-most panel is divided into 3 sections; History, File Tree & Collections.  The History section shows a timeline listed as Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, Last 14 days, Last 30 days & Last 12 months!  Click on the word Today, and the middle column is populated with a list of every PDF file you had opened today.  If you single click to select one of these files in the middle column, the right-most column then shows thumbnails of the individual pages of that file.  These thumbnails are scalable too.  Move the slider back & forth below the third column to zoom in & out on the pages.

Double click a listed file in the middle column, and Acrobat will then open and display that document.  However, if you double-click a page thumbnail in the right column, Acrobat will open that specific document – and display that exact page!

If you decide Organizer is a tool that you’d like to use frequently, you can customize your File Toolbar to show an Organizer button by right-clicking on the file toolbar & turning the currently hidden Organizer tool visible with a click!  You will also find great little shortcuts to your newly found History feature by clicking File > History.  Your History section of Organizer is available for you to use without actually opening the Organizer!

by David R. Mankin

Bookmarks are text based links that live in the Bookmarks Panel along the left edge of Acrobat & Reader’s interface. They are very useful in accurately navigating through a long PDF file. Seasoned Acrobat/Reader users know to look for bookmarks right away, but what of the newcomers to Acrobat files? Can we assume that any PDF file with bookmarks will be showing those bookmarks automatically? Unfortunately, the answer is no. You can download a huge PDF file that is artfully loaded with bookmarks, and have a novice never even know that the bookmarks exist.

I believe that if the Bookmarks Panel is open, even the 1st time Reader user will click on a bookmark to see what it does. That same user might not even know to click on the Bookmark Panel’s icon to snap it open.

How can you force any PDF file to open with the Bookmarks Panel showing? The switch is located on the Initial View section of the file’s Properties Dialog Box. Choose File > Properties (the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-D or Cmd-D on the Macintosh). The very first option presented is labeled Navigation Tab. If this option is set to Page Only, that document will open with just the page content showing every time.

To force the Bookmarks Panel to be open every time the file is launched, change this to read Bookmarks Panel and Page. If you save the file, close and reopen it, you will see the Bookmarks Panel open automatically.

Use Document Properties to control the opening view of your PDF file.

There are many other settings in this dialog box to explore, such as the Magnification & Page Layout options. You can even force your PDF file to open up without toolbars or the menu bar showing. Experiment and see how you can change the way the file opens after each tweak.

Don’t let your PDF file be the one that doesn’t get read thoroughly because the file’s bookmarks were never discovered. You spent the time and effort making them, put them in your audiences view from the start.