As Wikipedia says: “Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Systems to view, create, manipulate, print and manage files in Portable Document Format (PDF). The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (formerly Exchange) and Acrobat.com. The basic Acrobat Reader, available for several desktop and mobile platforms, is freeware; it supports viewing, printing and annotating of PDF files”. Acrobat Pro 9 is an old program; it is copyright 1984-2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Wikipedia says in their PDF page: “The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed in the 1990s to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.” It is a way for you to create a file that can be read just about anywhere. Wikipedia goes on to say: “…each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it”. You can also embed videos.
Another great feature of PDF, other than portability and encapsulation, is that you can use any paper size you want, even within the same PDF file. The first page may be 8.5 by 11 and the second page could be something completely different. In fact, you can take several different PDF files and merge them into one PDF file. On the menu of Acrobat Pro 9 is the Combine button. Click that then select Merge files into a single PDF. PDF files also have very good accessibility features for the visually impaired. PDF files also have very good security features.
Technical Foundations
According to Wikipedia, PDF contains three technologies that form the basis of PDF.
- A subset of the PostScript page description programming language, for generating the layout and graphics.
- A font-embedding/replacement system to allow fonts to travel with the documents.
- A structured storage system to bundle these elements and any associated content into a single file, with data compression where appropriate.
Creating PDF Files
There are many ways to create a new PDF file from within Acrobat Pro 9. You can create them from a file, scanner, web page, clipboard or blank page. When you select File -> Create PDF -> From file… you have a lot of different file types to choose from, include many graphic file types. It is recommended to start with a program such as MS Word to do your original content creations. Then you can, within Word, (or other application) save the Word file as a PDF file. This is because Word have easier-to-use text editing features. Once converted over to PDF you can then fine tune it.
Within Acrobat Pro 9 it is fairly easy to create headers and footers and watermarks for example. Creating tables is easy in Word, but not in Acrobat, so create your tables in Word (or similar program). You can edit text within a PDF, but it is not as easy as within Word. You don’t just start typing however. You need to use the TouchUp Text tool to edit text in a PDF file. You can find that in the Tools -> Advanced Editing menu.
You can create a PDF file from MS Word. Open Word and a Word file. You can export that as a PDF file. I am using Acrobat Pro 9, which is an older program from about 2008, which is 10 years old. I might be better off saving my Word file as an older version of Word so that Adobe can handle all of the features that might be in my Word file. I suggest saving it as a DOC file, not a DOCX file.
Some of the content of this post was developed from a Udemy.com course called Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 by Mr. Tim Miles.
Collection
Are you working with a few PDF files in a particular project or assignment? If so, creating a collection will save you time. If you have several PDF files you need to work with at the same time, and these files are stored in different folders, on different drives, on the network or anywhere else, you can create a collection. A collection is merely a named group of pointers to all of your PDF files. A collection does not move or alter the files in any way. It is simply a way for you to locate your PDF files quickly when you are inside Acrobat Pro 9. It is optional.
Portfolio
A portfolio allows us to take multiple PDF files and create another PDF file that acts as a wrapper containing several PDF files. This is what the third technical foundation is referring to. So, if you need to send several PDF files to someone, you could create a portfolio PDF and send them all as one file. The receiver of the portfolio will still be able to open and work with each file individually. You can even add other types of documents and add them to your portfolio. For example, you can add a Word document, and Excel document, a Notepad document, a PowerPoint document, JPG images, PNG images, GIF images and so on.
Modifying PDFs
Some of the basic types of modifications include: reordering pages, changing text content, adding headers footers and watermarks, numbering pages and adding bookmarks.
Reordering Pages
Reordering pages in Adobe is very easy. Open up the Pages View by clicking the pages icon at the top of the taskbar at the left side of the interface. All you need to do is click a page and drag it to where you want it. You can select multiple pages the typical way in Windows with either the Shift key or the Ctrl key.
Changing Content
Suppose you want to change some text. You cannot simply put your cursor in a spot and start typing. Also selecting text and pressing delete or backspace will not do any thing. You need to use the TouchUp Text tool. It’s under Tools -> Advanced Editing. This tool is used for touching up your document, not making major changes. Go back to your original document to do that.
Adding Headers and Footers
Go to Document -> Header & Footer -> Add. You also have Update and Remove. Selecting Add opens up a large dialog box. Notice that you can save headers and foots so that you may apply them to each document that you work with. This is handy for creating letterhead.
Inserting Watermarks
Suppose you want to insert “Draft” on every page. Perhaps you want to put “Confidential”. You can also insert a graphic of a company logo or whatever image you have. Go to Document -> Watermark. Change the opacity to about 25% or so. You may also angle it at about 45 degrees. You can pick your font and colour also, as well as the position on the page.
Numbering Pages
Why would you want to do this? If you have merged documents, you will probably need to renumber the pages. Also you may not want to number the first or first few pages. You can have Roman numerals for the first few pages and numbers for the remaining pages. On the left side of the GUI, open Pages if it is not already open. Right-click one of the pages and select Number Pages from the popup menu. Fill out the dialog box to how you want to number the pages.
Adding Bookmarks
Adding bookmarks to your document will make it easier to find sections or topics of you PDF file. In the left side of the GUI there is a bookmark icon that if you click it, all of your bookmarks will be listed. You may have sections or chapters in your document. You can select the title text and press Ctrl+B to create a bookmark. If you don’t select any text, Adobe assumes that you are referring to the entire page. If you do it this way you will need to type in a name for the bookmark. Bookmarks can exist underneath other bookmarks so that there is a hierarchy of bookmarks. If you have chapters with sections within the chapters you can create bookmarks to reflect that. Select a bookmark and drag it to see the horizontal black line change from a long line to a shorter one to indicate it’s level in the hierarchy. Bookmarks are a way of outlining your document.
Creating Smaller PDFs (Splitting Up a PDF)
Are you dividing or splitting a PDF file? How do you divide a PDF file into smaller files? There are likely several ways of doing this. One way that worked for me was to choose File, Print… from the menu. The printer is Microsoft Print to PDF. In the Print Range section of the Print dialog, enter the page range. Click the OK button, give it a file name and click the Save button (navigate to the folder you want to save it in first, if necessary).