Ya know, Acrobat—Acrobat Professional, that is—just so misunderstood…it offers so much stuff, so many commands…but most people only use it just to open, and maybe print PDFs.  Now I don’t wanna come off as some kinda poster-boy advocate for Acrobat or anything, but it’s got some great stuff to offer. In fact, it’s the lack of Acrobat know-how that compelled me to put together this list of 25 killer secrets. And while they’re not necessarily secret—they’re all right there in Acrobat just waitin’ to be used—they can be thought as secrets cuz nobody seems to know about 'em. There's so much great stuff in fact, that as I was putting this together, I quickly realized that I was gonna have to break it into three parts. So, you’ll get the first 8 secrets here, followed up by the next 8 in Part 2, and 9 more in Part 3. That’s a lotta good stuff, so fire up Acrobat and get readin’! In no particular order, here they are, 25 killer Acrobat secrets:

Secret #1: Settin' 'Er Up With Layers!

Didja know Acrobat has Layers? Yeah, Layers! When you’re creating a PDF outta InDesign or Illustrator, for example, you can specify to preserve your file's layers, which then appear in Acrobat’s Layers panel (View > Navigation Panels > Layers). At first, it might seem like you can’t do a whole lot to layers in a PDF file, but you can do quite a bit with a dash of creativity. For example, you can create a hyperlink (see Secret #3) that controls the visibility of these layers, thus controlling the visible content in your file. Imagine a link that says "Click here to see the Spanish version." While it’s all built into a single PDF file, you could have different "versions" of a file available. This is just one simple example. Use a bit of imagination, and put Acrobat layers to work!

Secret #2: Super-Sweet Navigation With Bookmarks!

You know about Bookmarks in Acrobat, right? You don’t? Oh man, this is arguably one of the best navigation devices you can add to PDF files. Bookmarks are sorta like a clickable list of hyperlinks that take a user to different locations throughout a PDF—imagine a clickable Table Of Contents, or a list of different sections within your file, for example. To getcha started, choose View > Navigation Panels > Bookmarks. Use the settings underneath the panel’s Options menu (top-right corner) to create new bookmarks, delete ‘em, and to otherwise mess around. Definitely consider adding bookmarks to your PDFs to make them easier for users to make their way around! In fact, check out this cool video I did, which'll show ya how to use bookmarks!

Secret #3: Add Major Interactivity With Hyperlinks!

You might know about creating hyperlinks if you're into web development, but didja know you can add ‘em to PDFs as well? It’s real easy, too. In fact, you can make any part of a PDF file clickable, and have all sortsa cool things happen, like open web sites, play an audio file, control a form, and even more. Try this: Choose View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing (one of the coolest toolbars in Acrobat, by the way); then on the Advanced Editing toolbar, click on the Link tool (the one that looks like two wee chain links); then click and drag a box around the text or image that you’d like to make clickable. In the dialog that appears, you can control the appearance of your hyperlink, as well as the link’s action. Have fun!

Secret #4: Portability And Design Integrity, It’s PDF-Based Forms!

Next up, PDF-based forms. Yup, rather than wrestling with web-based forms, or (gakk!) the near-unusable Word forms (hold up, I’m...gonna... heave...), you can create forms in Acrobat. It’s totally huge, and not enough people know about this. Now the big question: Why would you want to create forms in Acrobat? I’ll tell ya. For all the reasons why you’re already using PDFs: cross-platform, file-size, portability, preservation of document layout and integrity…and the list goes on. So whatcha waitin’ for? Get up to speed with PDF-based forms with Acrobat’s Forms toolbar. Choosing View > Toolbars > Forms will getcha started.

[ Back to Web + Mag Articles ] [ Go to page: 1 | 2 ]