Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard

A Review    by    Ed O'Donnell

 

 

I, like most all computer users, have for many years used Adobe Reader.  I never thought I had any need for getting Adobe Acrobat.  But then our computer club's president wanted to add the club's newsletter to the club web site.  Until then, the newsletter was printed out and distributed at the club meetings.

 

Being the club's Webmaster, I accepted the task of adding the newsletter to the web site.  The hard copy version of the newsletter is created using Microsoft Publisher.  It was decided to convert the Publisher newsletter to a PDF file.  So, I acquired Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard thru the CSCC/Adobe User Group Relations Program.

 

The Acrobat carton included the installation CD, Getting Started book and a Registration pamphlet.

 

You must install Adobe Acrobat onto your hard drive; you cannot run the program from the CD.  As to be expected from any software nowadays, the installation was flawless.

 

I then proceeded, as most of us often do, to fire up Acrobat, skipping reading the Getting Started book.   Tried File>Create PDF>From File>Open>BB.pub.  Wrong.  Acrobat informed me "could not open BB.pub".   Nice.  Now what? Still skipping reading Getting Started, I bumbled around in Acrobat.  After considerable wasted time, I discovered by opening BB.pub in Publisher, and "printing" to the Adobe PDF format, that BB.pdf was created.  BB.pdf preserved the exact look and content of the original Publisher file.  Upon reading Getting Started, the technique of "printing" to the Adobe PDF format was revealed.   I heartily recommend reading Getting Started before firing up Acrobat.

 

Now having read Getting Started, here are the different ways you can create PDF documents.

 

1.  The easiest way is to right-click on a file in Windows Explorer.  Then choose Convert to Adobe PDF.

 

2.  In Adobe Acrobat, click File>Create PDF>From File and browse to find the original file and Open it.   The original file should be converted to PDF.

 

3.  There is one-button PDF creation from Microsoft applications like Internet Explorer and Word.  Just click the small "Convert to Adobe PDF" icon and the PDF conversion occurs.

 

4.  As mentioned above, you can use the Print command in most applications to create a PDF document by "printing" to the Adobe PDF format.   

 

So, now having read Getting Started, I tried the four ways noted above to convert a Publisher file to PDF.   Here's my results:

 

1.  Right click on a file in Windows Explorer:

Right clicked on BB.pub in Windows Explorer.   Publisher executed displaying BB.pub.  A "Save PDF File As" window displayed.  Clicked Save.  The PDF file was created and displayed in an Acrobat window.   Conversion was a success.

 

2.  In Adobe Acrobat, click File>Create PDF>From File:

Opened Adobe Acrobat.  Clicked File>Create PDF>From File.  Browsed to BB.pub file.  Clicked Open.   Dialog window displayed "Acrobat could not open BB.pub because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been corrupted (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)." BB.pub was sent to me as an email attachment.

 

3.  One-button creation:

Opened BB.pub in Publisher.  No one-button "Convert to Adobe PDF" icon was visible.  Unable to try conversion.

 

4.  Use the Print command:

Opened BB.pub in Publisher.  Clicked File>Print>Abobe PDF.  A dialog box displayed requesting a destination for the PDF file.  Filled in the destination.  Conversion completed and Acrobat opened up with BB.pdf.  Conversion was a success.

 

Fortunately, two of the four techniques for converting a Publisher file to PDF worked for me.   I haven't done conversion of multiple files yet.  But, note that Acrobat can combine several different documents from multiple applications into a single PDF document.  Also there are other Acrobat functions I haven't tried yet: annotations, bookmarks, headers and footers, watermarks, backgrounds and file attachments.  As time goes by, I may make use of these functions.

 

Acrobat is not an authoring application.  Extensive changes to a PDF document should be edited in the source file, but  limited editing in a PDF Document is possible.  I successfully made some small edits to our PDF document BB.pdf.  Also, you can encrypt your PDF documents and digitally sign or certify a PDF document.  I'm not interested in this feature and will probably never apply encrypting or digital signature.  Our PDF newsletter will be posted on our computer club's web site.  Anyone using the free Adobe Reader, will be able to open it and read it.  Converting BB.pub to a PDF file created a small reduction in file size.  BB.pub is 273 KB and BB.pdf is 233 KB.  Any reduction in file size helps conserve our storage space on the web server.

 

Adobe Help (Help>Complete Acrobat 6.0 Help) is considerable and complete.  Although I didn't use Help initially, I subsequently found it easy to use and helpful.  With Help, I should be able to expand my capabilities in Acrobat.  With an internet connection you can access Adobe's Online Support for tutorials, updates, etc.

 

 

Acrobat 6.0 Standard

Adobe Corp.

$299 Full version

$99 Upgrade