You can add your own custom bookmarks and links to any PDF document by using the tools in Adobe PDF Reader. Here are some methods for adding new bookmarks.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Many Acrobat commands can be executed using keyboard shortcuts. You can create a bookmark by using the keyboard shortcut for the New Bookmarks command.

1. To create a new bookmark by using a keyboard shortcut, press Ctrl-B (Windows) or Command-B (Mac OS), and then name the bookmark. Click outside the bookmark to deselect it.
2. In the document window, navigate to the page that you want to link with the bookmark.
3. With the newly created bookmark selected in the Bookmarks panel, choose Set Bookmark Destination from the Options menu in the Bookmarks panel.

Automatically Setting the Correct Link

You can create, name, and automatically link a bookmark by selecting text in the document pane.

1. Set the magnification of the page at the required level. Whatever magnification you use will be inherited by the bookmark.
2. Click the Select tool in the toolbar.
3. Move the I-beam pointer into the document page, and drag to highlight the text that you want to use as your bookmark.
4. Click the New Bookmark icon at the top of the Bookmarks panel. A new bookmark is created in the Bookmarks list, and the highlighted text from the document pane is used as the bookmark name. By default, the new bookmark links to the current page view displayed in the document window.

Adobe PDF Reader 9 can compare two documents to see what changes have been made from one version to another. Donna L. Baker discusses the Compare feature and explains how comparing differs from reviewing.

The Compare feature in Adobe PDF Reader 9 has come a long way from its earlier versions. In Acrobat 9, differences between two versions of a document are highlighted and commented.

Compare shows differences in text and images based on three different document structures programmed into the feature. To do a comparison, follow these steps:

1. Choose Document > Compare Documents to open the Compare Documents dialog box.
2. Click Choose for each of the Compare (older document) and To (newer document) fields, and locate and select the files you want to use. Click the Document pop-up menu to choose any open files for either document option.
3. For both documents, type a page number in the First Page and Last Page fields to change the comparisons (if necessary). The fields list the page numbers for the first and last pages of the documents automatically.
4. Select a Document Description option (read about the options in the sidebar “Matching Descriptions”).
5. Click OK to close the dialog box and compare the files. Acrobat processes the files and generates a list of the changes. The contents are displayed in the Compare navigation pane, new in Acrobat 9.
6. Save the file for future reference.

There are several tasks you can take on in the Compare feature:

• Another page is added before the document pages that lists the names of the files, whether differences were found, and a key to the report. You can click links on this Summary page to view either the newer or older document, as well as show the first change in the report.
• Click a page thumbnail to show that page in the Document pane.
• Choose Show Color Legend to display the colors used for different types of comparisons as an overlay in the Document pane.
• To show each of the documents in its own window, choose Options > Show Documents Tiled or Options > Show Documents Side by Side.
• To synchronize the pages while showing both documents in their own windows, choose Options > Synchronize Pages.
• To change the size of the page thumbnails, choose Options > Thumbnail Size and select the desired setting.
• Drag the splitter bar at the bottom of the Compare pane upward to show thumbnails of the old document’s pages. Click a thumbnail to open the page in a new window.

Customizing the Comparison

The new Compare tools in Adobe PDF Reader 9 offer a lot of customization. If you want to personalize the layout, click Show Options in the Compare pane to toggle the choices. You can choose among the following options:

• Specify types of changes to show, such as text, images, formatting, and backgrounds.
• Select a color scheme to use for displaying the report.
• Drag an Opacity slider to set how transparent/opaque the overlying comments are.

Once you’ve made your choices, click Hide Options to toggle the options closed. Your choices can be viewed in the Compare pane’s Options menu.

Adobe 3D Reviewer is a separate application that’s installed with Adobe PDF Reader Pro Extended. In this How-To, i describe some of the uses of Adobe 3D Reviewer for working with 3D files.

Adobe 3D Reviewer is a separate application that’s installed with Acrobat Pro Extended. To open 3D Reviewer outside Acrobat Pro Extended, choose Start > Programs > Adobe 3D Reviewer. If you’re working with a model in Acrobat Pro Extended, you can right-click the model and choose Edit in 3D Reviewer.

You can use Adobe 3D Reviewer to work with 3D files in many ways:

• Merge CAD files
• Compare and measure exact geometry
• Calculate bounding box and physical properties
• Move and delete parts
• Add animations
• Create exploded views and bills of material
• Export to common 3D formats such as Universal 3D (U3D) and raster and vector 2D image files

Making Your Way Around Adobe 3D Reviewer

At first glance (and even second and third), Adobe 3D Reviewer can seem rather daunting. Fortunately, the program offers a number of workspaces designed for different types of workflows. To select one, choose Workspace > Toolbar Presets and then select an option. Choose from these layouts:

• Visualization. This is the default set of toolbars, which includes tools used for viewing 3D assemblies and parts. This configuration displays the Standard, 3D Controls, Default Views, Display Mode, Selection Filters, Hide/Show, and View/Configuration toolbars.
• Design Review. This layout contains tools used for reviewing design projects, such as bounding boxes, markups, and dimensioning tools. This configuration displays the Design Review, Positioning, and Axis toolbars.
• Technical Documentation. This layout is used chiefly by technical writers for building illustrations and animations for manuals and guides. The Play Animation and Snapshot tools are displayed.

The TouchUp Text tool in Adobe PDF Reader 9 is designed for making quick textual and formatting changes in a document. Donna L. Baker walks us through the process of using the TouchUp Text tool.

To touch up a word or line of text in an Acrobat document, simply use the TouchUp Text tool in Acrobat. Here’s how:

1. Right-click (Mac: Control-click) the toolbar well and choose Advanced Editing to open the Advanced Editing toolbar.
2. Select the TouchUp Text tool from the Advanced Editing toolbar and click the tool within the text you want to edit. The paragraph is surrounded by a bounding box.
3. Drag the I-beam pointer to select all or part of the paragraph, or position the I-beam within the text you want to edit.
4. Type the replacement text or add new text at the position of the I-beam pointer. Click outside the highlighted area to deselect the text.

You can modify properties of new text as well as text already in the document, including the following:

• Font and font size
• Fill and stroke options
• Font embedding and subsetting
• Spacing between words and characters
• Baseline adjustments

Follow these steps:

1. With the TouchUp Text tool, first click the row of text or select the words or characters you want to edit.
2. Right-click (Mac: Control-click) the text to open the shortcut menu. Choose Properties. The TouchUp Properties dialog box opens.
3. Choose a font from the Font drop-down list. Adjust other text attributes as desired and as the font’s attributes allow. As you make adjustments, the changes are previewed automatically in the selected text.
4. Click Close to apply the settings.

Tips for Tranquil Text Tweaking

Keep these notes in mind when touching up text:

• If you need to select an entire paragraph, use the shortcut key combination Ctrl-A (Mac: Command-A).
• To add new text, with the TouchUp Text tool active, Ctrl-click (Mac: Option-click) within the document where you want to add the text. The New Text Font dialog box opens with the default options set (Arial text and horizontal writing mode). Select the font and writing mode you want, and click OK. The default text “New Text” appears on the page. Select it, and then type the new text. Click outside the new line of text to finish the process.
• Only fonts with a vertical writing mode will write vertically. An error message means that you’ve selected a horizontal-only font.
• If the text isn’t behaving as text, maybe it isn’t actually text. Scanned text that hasn’t been captured behaves like an image.
• If you add text and it won’t wrap to the next line, choose Edit > Preferences > TouchUp (Mac: Acrobat > Preferences > TouchUp) and select the Enable Text Word Wrapping checkbox.

Layers convert using the settings you choose in Visio’s Layer Properties dialog box, such as visibility, locks, and names. In the Adobe PDF program menu, choose Adobe PDF > Convert all Pages in Drawing to include all layers, including the background. Select basic conversion options as with the other PDFMakers.

The Visio PDFMaker settings include options for embedded data. Choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings to display the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog box. In the Application Settings area on the General tab, look for options to include Visio properties, as well as how to manage objects without custom properties.

The conversion process in Visio uses a multipanel PDFMaker. As you step through the PDFMaker, be sure to identify how you want to manage the exported layers. For ease of use in the exported PDF, consider grouping layers into layer sets.

One cool feature in Adobe PDF Reader 9 is the ability to convert an image containing text into real text, using optical character recognition (OCR). It isn’t perfect, as Donna L. Baker notes, but Acrobat can save you a significant number of keystrokes that you would otherwise spend in retyping content.

A page scanned in older versions of Acrobat, or one created from a photo or drawing, is only an image of a page, and you can’t manipulate its content by extracting images or modifying the text. However, Acrobat can convert the image of the document into actual text or add a text layer to the document by using optical character recognition (OCR).

Basic Conversion

To capture the content of an image document, follow these steps:

1. Choose Document > OCR Text Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR. The Recognize Text dialog box opens. Specify whether you want to capture the current page, an entire document, or specified pages in a multipage document.
2. Click the Edit button to open the Recognize Text – Settings dialog box. Choose one of three options in the PDF Output Style pop-up menu:
   • Searchable Image compresses the foreground and places the searchable text behind the image. Note that compressing affects the image quality.
   • Searchable Image (Exact) keeps the foreground of the page intact and places the searchable text behind the image.
   • ClearScan rebuilds the page, converting the content into text, fonts, and graphics.
3. If you selected either the Searchable Image or the ClearScan OCR choice, choose one of four options from the Downsample Images pop-up menu—anywhere from 600 dpi down to 72 dpi. (Downsampling reduces file size, but also can result in unusable images.) Click OK to return to the Recognize Text dialog box.
4. Click OK to start the capture process. Be patient. Depending on the size and complexity of the document, the process can take a minute or two. When the process is complete, the dialog box closes and the results of the conversion are shown in the document.

By combining files in a portfolio PDF, you can keep related documents organized and share them easily. I point out some useful capabilities for managing portfolios in Adobe PDF Reader 9.

Acrobat offers some specific commands for working with a portfolio PDF file. Here are a few of those commands:

• From the Home mode, click Modify on the Portfolio toolbar and choose Secure Portfolio from the pop-up menu (or choose File > Modify PDF Portfolio > Secure Portfolio on the program menu) to specify restrictions and set a password.
• From the Home mode, choose File > Export > Export Multiple Files to extract the component files of your portfolio in a selected file format. In the Export Multiple Files dialog box, click Add Files > Add Open Files to specify the portfolio, and click OK. In the Output Options dialog box, select a target folder, specify a naming system, and choose an export format. Click OK to process the files.
• From any viewing mode, choose File > Portfolio Properties to open the Document Properties dialog box, where you can add descriptions, specify security, and so on.
• From any viewing mode, select an imported movie file and choose Modify > Convert to Flash Movie to change the file’s format.

Sometimes a portfolio can become very large, and it’s not always easy to keep track of your content. Fortunately, Acrobat offers a customized search feature that lets you search everything in your portfolio, including the information listed in Details mode, and in non-PDF files. To search the files in a portfolio, follow these steps:

1. Type the terms in the Search field and click Search.

   NOTE: You can set some criteria from the pop-up menu, including Whole Words Only and Case Sensitive. The Search Entire Portfolio option is selected by default, and cannot be deselected.

2. Review the returns shown in the Search Results dialog box.
3. Click a return to read the file’s details. If you’re in Details mode, the file is highlighted in the list; if you’re in Preview mode, the result is highlighted on the page, as shown in Figure 2.
4. Click Previous or Next to review the results.
5. Close the Search Results pane when you’re finished.

A number of programs produce PDF files that contain metadata converted from custom information embedded in the source files. I show how to view and work with this embedded object data, using Adobe PDF Reader 9.

To view custom metadata embedded in a PDF file, choose Tools > Analysis > Object Data Tool, or select the Object Data tool (see Figure 1) on the Analysis toolbar.

Move the Object Data tool over the page. When you mouse over an object that contains metadata, the pointer changes to show crosshairs. Click to select all the objects containing data in the drawing; double-click to select just the object beneath the tool.

The Model Tree pane opens once the object selection is complete, and the content of the embedded data is shown in the lower section of the pane.

From the Options menu in the dialog box, you can choose multiple ways to use the data, including the following:

• Export the data as XML from either the selected node or the entire model tree.
• Copy the content of an object’s data to the clipboard.

More Object Actions

Using the Model Tree pane, here are more ways to work with the object data in a drawing:

• From the Highlight Color pop-up menu, you can open a color picker and choose another color to highlight or identify a selected object.
• Choose Previous View from the Options menu to go back to content viewed at the previous magnification.
• To check out an object close up, select it from the Model Tree pane and choose Zoom to Selection from the Options menu. The document pane shows just the selected object.
• Choose an object from the list at the top of the Model Tree pane and then choose Count from the Options menu. The resulting information dialog box lists the number of objects that have the same data associations. Some objects are single objects, whereas others are created in multiples.

Adding audio and video capabilities to your presentation can make it much more interesting for your audience. I will show how to work with these features in Adobe PDF Reader 9.

In addition to adding existing audio files, you can record your own audio files to use in Adobe Presenter presentations. Recorded files are saved in MP3 format.

To record audio, choose Adobe Presenter > Record Audio and read the test message. When the Input Level shows OK, click OK to open the Record Audio dialog box. Using the controls in the dialog box, add and review audio to use for your presentation.

Consider these tips to ensure that you’re recording the best audio possible:

• Specify the audio recording quality. Choose Adobe Presenter > Preferences > Quality. Select from CD Quality (highest) to Low Bandwidth (lowest). Balance the required quality against the file size; the higher the quality, the greater the file size.
• Preview the audio as you record it in the Audio Editor. (You can also preview later from the PowerPoint window.) Choose Adobe Presenter > Edit Audio > View > Slide Show to display the Edit Audio window overlaying the presentation slides.

Use video you import from other locations, or record and customize it directly through Adobe Presenter—perfect for adding those “talking head” features to your presentation:

• Choose Adobe Presenter > Capture Video to open the Capture Video dialog box. Choose the slide to which you want to link, select the desired device and quality, and click Record. Click Stop when finished recording, and review by clicking Play. When you’re done, click Save to open a dialog box where you can name the file and choose a storage location.
• Select the slide where you want to add the video, and choose Adobe Presenter > Import Video. Select the video to import, click Open, and wait while the file is processed. You’ll see a white box overlaying the slide on which the video is placed.

Regardless of the method you use for bringing video into a presentation, you can edit it via Adobe Presenter. Here’s how:

1. Select Adobe Presenter > Edit Video to open the Edit Video dialog box.
2. To preview the clip, click Play; click Stop/Pause to stop the preview.
3. If desired, adjust the length of the clip by dragging the start and end markers in from the edges of the playbar.
4. Specify other features for the video as desired. For example:
   • Choose how to play video by selecting the slide or sidebar option.
   • Choose a Fade or Speed option from the Effects pull-down menu.
   • Choose when to play the video by selecting an option from the Start After pop-up menu. You can indicate a time delay, or specify that the movie will start after the slide’s animation or audio.
5. When you’ve finished your edits, click OK to close the dialog box.
6. Save the file. To view the video, you can either render the project or choose View > Slideshow from the PowerPoint menu.

The Tracker feature in Adobe PDF Reader can help to keep you from going crazy with trying to remember which files you’ve reviewed, which you’ve sent to someone else for review, and the current stage of the various files in the process.

Initiating and tracking multiple reviews, participating in others, and trying to keep it all straight isn’t simple. Fortunately, Acrobat offers the Tracker to help you keep tabs on the process.

In Adobe Reader 9, choose View > Tracker. In Acrobat 9, choose Track Reviews from the Comment task button pop-up menu. All your current reviews, both those you’ve initiated and others in which you’re participating (and any servers with which you’re working), are listed in the left column of the window. Open or collapse categories in the Tracker by clicking the corresponding icons to the left of the category name.

The range of activities and checks you can perform in the Tracker include the following:

• Updates. Click Latest Updates to display information about your reviews. You can also access links for managing and creating more reviews. If the name of a review is shown in bold in the left pane, the review has been updated in some way—new reviewers or comments were added, or the deadline has been updated. If you like, turn on notifications that display icons and pop-ups when an update occurs.
• Viewing a review’s details. Click the name of a review in the left pane to show the review’s details, including a list of participants and the date and time the review was started. From the review’s details view, click View Comments to open the tracked file in Acrobat. Click the File Location link in the right pane to open the document in either Acrobat or Adobe Reader 9, depending on which program you’re using.

  TIP: A large review—for example, one with dozens of participants—can be tiresome to scroll, even using the slick Tracker interface. To keep a snapshot of a review, right-click (Mac: Control-click) the review’s name in the left pane of the Tracker. From the shortcut menu, choose Create PDF from Tracker Details. All the content that you review in the right pane of the Tracker is converted to PDF.

• Communications. Select a review from the list in the left pane, and click Email All Reviewers or Add Reviewers to open the appropriate dialog boxes.

  NOTE: The Tracker in Adobe Reader can only view incoming reviews; you can’t initiate a new review, email the reviewers, add more reviewers, or send a review reminder.

• Servers. You can check on the servers you’re using for reviewing. (Unless you’ve set up an internal server system, however, you’ll see Acrobat.com listed as the only server.) Click the server’s name in the left pane to show the details in the right pane, including the names of files served from that location and the status of the workflow. If you see a green checkmark, the server is functioning properly.
• Ending a review. When a review is initiated, you can specify an end date. Click the date listed in the review’s details in the Tracker and select a different end date, or delete the deadline date. Once a review has ended, the commenting tools are disabled, and your reviewers can’t make any more comments on the review document.
• Cleanup. You can use folders to sort out the reviews in which you’re involved. If you’re the initiator of a review, you can remove it from the Tracker listings by selecting the review’s name in the listing and clicking Delete (the trash can icon). You don’t delete the file itself from your hard drive, but you remove the review files and comments from the Acrobat.com server.
• Add, organize, and view RSS subscriptions. In earlier versions of Acrobat, web broadcast subscriptions and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds were shown in the Tracker. You won’t find them in the Acrobat 9 Tracker, but they aren’t gone. Choose Edit > Preferences (Acrobat > Preferences), and choose Tracker from the category list at the left side of the Preferences dialog box. Select the Enable RSS Feeds in Tracker checkbox and click OK. In the Tracker, you can subscribe/unsubscribe, manage, and read your RSS feeds.

Sort It Out

Suppose you’re involved in one large project with one group, and another project with another group. In the course of your usual workday, you participate in a couple of reviews for each project. Each review adds another line to the list in the left pane of the Tracker. To stay organized, follow these steps:

1. Right-click (Mac: Control-click) the Sent or Joined labels in the Reviews section of the Tracker and choose Create New Folder. In the resulting dialog box, name the folder and click OK.
2. Right-click (Mac: Control-click) a review’s name to open the shortcut menu, choose Send to Folder, and select the new folder you added. The review is added to the folder.
3. Repeat as necessary until your Tracker structure is simplified and organized.