In this latest release from Adobe, Acrobat 4 offers a wide variety of options for creating PDF files, a popular format for printing, the Internet, tutorials, and CD-ROM. One of the things that makes the PDF file format so popular that those who receive your files will experience your documents as you have created them.
September 2, 1999
*These features are only available in Windows at this time.
In this article are a few techniques to help you get the most out of Acrobat 4. You will learn how to: Convert any Document to a PDF, Use Drag And Drop, Edit Text and Graphics, and Convert Web Pages to PDF files.
Converting Documents to PDF
When you load Acrobat 4 onto your computer, the software installs macros in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint, giving you icons that load within these programs. To convert documents into PDF format from within MS Word (97), choose File: Create Adobe PDF, or simply click on the Create Adobe PDF icon above the main toolbar. Either method will bring up the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog. In the dialog box are four tabs: General, Output, Bookmarks, and Display. Under the General Tab, your main options are: Use Acrobat PDFWriter and Use Acrobat Distiller. Choose which one you wish to use, then click on Create. One other conversion option within Word is to use the Print command. Under the Printer Name Popup, you can choose Acrobat Distiller or Acrobat PDFWriter. You can also open text and graphics files from within Acrobat as well.
Acrobat PDF Writer is good if your document is text. However, if your document contains graphics, you're better off to use Distiller. One more thing, if you choose the Acrobat PDFWriter option, you will not have access to PDFMaker's enhanced features. That means no bookmarks, text notes, threads, or document information. To have access to these features, you must use Distiller-though your files will be larger as a result.
Drag and Drop Conversion to PDF
Use of Drag and Drop is an easy way to create documents. Simply locate the document of your choice, then drag it over the Acrobat shortcut icon on the desktop. This activates Acrobat PDFMaker. Another option is to drag the file over an open Acrobat document, which will work as well.
Drag and Drop is also available with Web Capture. Simply drag a web link or web site icon onto the Acrobat shortcut icon on the desktop, the Acrobat application icon, or an open Acrobat Window. This will start Acrobat PDFMaker.
Edit Text and Graphics
To edit text within Acrobat, click on the Touchup Text tool, located on the bottom left of the Toolbar. Next, click on the line of text you wish to edit. A box appears around the entire line and you can make use of Cut, Copy, and Paste.
The Select All command selects all characters in the currently active line. However, you can only edit one line at a time, which could slow you down considerably. The Touchup Text tool is good for minor edits, so if you need to do extensive corrections, you would be better off to do that in the original document.
Note the small triangle at the bottom of the Touchup Text icon. Pressing on this will reveal the Touchup Object tool. Using the Touchup Object tool, you can select a graphic object in a PDF document and move it to a new location. To do so, go to the page where the graphic object or text block is located. Click on the Touchup Object tool, then click on the object and drag it to a new position. Some of the editing tools available for graphics are: Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste In, Delete, Select All, Select None, Delete Clip, etc.
To edit a graphic from within Acrobat, make sure the PDF file is open and at the correct page. Then click on the Touchup Object tool. Next, hold down CTRL and double-click on the image. That will launch Photoshop, Illustrator or other editing program that you use. Once you've completed your editing, you can place the object directly back in the PDF document. However, you need to make sure that your image editing software is properly installed and that the necessary plug-ins have been configured correctly. If not, the graphic will be saved to your disk, rather than your PDF document. This process should work just fine if you have Photoshop 5 or Illustrator 7. If not, check with Adobe and/or your software publisher for more information.
In the next section, we'll go into detail about the more Web-specific features of Adobe Acrobat 4.
This article is in three parts:
