ACROBAT TRAINING VIDEOS FOR LAWYERS

Click here for a list of Adobe Acrobat training videos, focusing on features for lawyers. There are related blog articles for many of the topics, and some videos are still to come - you'll have to check back.

The list covers the basics (including the differences between printing to PDF and the PDF makers in Office programs, which is more interesting than you thought), binders and portfolios, PDF comparison, OCR, security, redaction, Bates numbering, forms, and more.

Labels: Acrobat, law, software

posted by bruceb at 12/01/2008 12:58:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT BINDERS & PORTFOLIOS

Acrobat 9 Professional builds on the features in Acrobat 8 that made it an important tool in many offices, especially law offices. There is a vastly improved document comparison routine and enhanced Bates numbering, for example, along with small improvements in transfers to Word, file splitting, and other features.

Acrobat 8 introduced PDF "packages," single PDF files that contain multiple PDFs assembled from multiple sources. Packages are particularly good at storing email folders; a single PDF can contain messages that are listed individually, stored in the PDF with their attachments, and can be sorted and searched. Here's a good explanation of Acrobat packages.

In Acrobat 9, packages have been dressed up into "Portfolios," which have some dramatically different features. In a Portfolio, many documents can be gathered together into a single file, where they will be stored in their native format - a Word file is stored as a Word file, a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, and so on - instead of being converted to PDF format. Only a few clicks are required to add a welcome page, a page with either thumbnails of the contents or a list, a logo, and more.

A well-designed wizard makes Portfolios easier to create than packages were, so the new features do not require rocket science to use. It is important to know that Portfolios can only be opened by Acrobat 8 or 9, either the full edition or the free Reader. If they're opened in Acrobat 8, a warning message appears and many of the cool display features are lost, although the contents are still listed and the files are fully usable.

Adobe included "Binders" as a way to ensure some backward compatibility. Binders take longer to assemble and don't look as interesting, but it is possible to use Binders to gather groups of PDFs into a single file that can be opened by any version of Acrobat from version 5 forward.

The good folks at Acrobat For Legal Professionals put together a lovely guide for lawyers about Portfolios and Binders, with detailed, illustrated instructions about how to create a professional looking Portfolio with all the documents normally presented on paper at the end of a real estate closing. It's well worth reading if you use Acrobat - the results are compelling.

I was drawn to the presentation by something different. I'm not convinced that many small offices will use Acrobat.com to share files; we are overloaded with new services and forced to be selective about which ones get our attention. But the widget that was used on the blog to display a thumbnail of the file and allow it to be downloaded from Acrobat.com - well, it's just super. Really, go to the blog post and look at the little thumbnail of the document, which you can use to page through it and zoom to full screen and then download the actual PDF.

It looked so nifty that I just spent the last 45 minutes trying to get the same widget embedded in this post so you could see it. I've been introduced to an interesting variety of error messages, endless hourglass, and crashed copies of Internet Explorer. Which goes back to my point about taking these services seriously! Given time, I would discover the quirk that allowed the "Embed" feature to work and I'd be able to use it going forward. We don't have much time. Don't plan to use any new technology without effort!

Labels: Acrobat, business, law, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/07/2008 01:45:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT READER 9

Adobe has released Acrobat Reader 9, the new version of its PDF reader; the full version of Acrobat 9 will follow shortly. We'll be pressured to install the new version by reminders popping up from our toolbar, by notices when an earlier version of Acrobat is opened, by ads and news items and blogs.

Part of the difficulty with our computer experiences comes from updates like this - well-meaning manufacturers adding complexity that will not be useful to the vast majority of users.

Acrobat 8 was a significant improvement and I encouraged people to upgrade to the Reader and the full Acrobat program. Acrobat Reader was much faster than previous versions; Acrobat Professional 8 offered genuinely exciting new features that would be used by many people.

Acrobat 9 - well, I haven't seen anything compelling yet. The new features in the full program are:

• Improved launch speeds. Great, but I haven't found that to be a big problem recently.
• "PDF Portfolios," a new way to create a single PDF file that contains drawings, e-mails, spreadsheets, and videos. I haven't been in any offices likely to use PDFs for this purpose and I sense compatibility problems, just as the new formats for Microsoft Office 2007 caused confusion and grief.
• Support for embedding Shockwave and Flash movies in PDFs. Are there a lot of people waiting to do this?
• Integrated access to Acrobat.com, the uncompelling online portal for storing and collaborating on files. Again, I expect that to be ignored by most people.

Here's what I'm reading about Acrobat Reader 9. (Blog examples: vicious brief writeup, vicious longer writeup, another unhappy user, screenshots of a Mac installation leading to a program crash.)

• The installation file is huge! It's a 33Mb download that unpacks into 200Mb of installation files.
• The installation process is glacially slow, even worse than Adobe's notoriously slow installations from the last few years.
• The installation includes Adobe Air, which is wholly irrelevant to using Acrobat Reader. Adobe Air is technology that can be used to build interactive web services. Bundling it with Acrobat Reader is ostensibly done to assist the integration with Acrobat.com, but in fact it's a stealth installation so Adobe can tell potential licensees that Adobe Air has a big installed base.
• The default installation includes the eBay desktop program, a demonstration of Adobe Air that will be superswell for the twelve people who will use it and just more useless crap for the rest of us.
• It scatters links on desktop and Start menu for Acrobat.com.

I'm going to delay installing Acrobat 9 for as long as possible. I don't think it's harmful or evil but it sure doesn't look necessary.

Labels: Acrobat, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/06/2008 03:15:00 PM | permalink

ACROBAT ONLINE

Adobe has launched an online suite of software and services, along with announcing the July release of Acrobat 9. It's all interesting but I have a sense of overload already, and we're still very early in the new age of online web services.

Acrobat.com is ready for you to begin using for free - an email address and a password opens up online file storage, convenient file sharing, an online word processor, web conferencing, and a PDF converter. I can only mention a few things in passing, but this article has a nice description of each of the features.

Adobe has designed a very appealing set of controls for its services, with lots of functions presented elegantly. The file sharing feature makes it easy to send an email with a large file attachment by uploading the file to Adobe's servers and sending only a link in the message. There's a generous amount of free space for file storage. The web conferencing stands out for ease of use.

In addition to many small companies offering each of the various parts, Microsoft and Google have already begun to roll out their own online suites. Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live Workspace and other Microsoft Live services each provide more or less the same functions: Google offers its typically quirky and sometimes overly simplistic interface; Microsoft counters with some appealing services that are all too often overlapping, confusing, and complex. Now Adobe enters the field with presumably a big promotional push.

Each of these suites will only reward a person or business who commits to one of them wholeheartedly. Who's ready to do that? There are a hundred services that will help you send an oversize email attachment. Web conferencing is easy to come by. The benefits of Adobe's services might emerge if you take advantage of their integration, which means committing to them and using them daily as a way to change your business flow. I don't feel any appetite among my very small business clients for a change like that and I'm not sure I'd be doing them a favor if I tried to create that momentum - not yet, anyway.

In just a few minutes, I ran into some limitations of the Acrobat.com services - not big problems, just typical startup issues.

• The initial login was problematic - the service didn't recognize my "Adobe ID" and I had to go through the password reset process.
• The online word processor, "Buzzword," uses a separate login name and password for some reason, and stores its documents separately from the other Adobe file storage service.
• The word processor is adequate for the basics but no more than that. Here's more info about Buzzword.
• The online file storage will not accept any media files - no online storage of music or movies. I can understand why Adobe handles difficult copyright issues that way, but it limits the usefulness of the service.
• There is an online PDF converter to create PDFs from Office documents and other formats, but the free converter can only be used five times - hardly worth mentioning. Adobe isn't going to give up its profits from selling Acrobat that easily!

Now with all that said, I encourage you to take a look at Acrobat.com! Set up your password and try things out! The design is lovely and the service has much promise. But don't commit to it half-heartedly or it will become just another forgotten password for a web site where a few forgotten files are stored.

As to Acrobat 9, there are no details yet about whether there will be any important new features for businesses. The presentation on Monday focused on the ability to embed Flash videos in PDF files. How . . . special. There will also be hooks to the online Acrobat.com service to facilitate collaborating on PDF files, which doesn't mean much if we're not otherwise using the Acrobat.com service. Waiting for details on that one.

Labels: Acrobat, business, Google, Microsoft, Office, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/03/2008 12:21:00 AM | permalink

XMAS SHOPPING

Monday, December 10 is expected to be the busiest online shopping day of the year.

Can I ask you for a favor?

There are a few links on the bruceb favorites page and the bruceb shopping page that lead to places you might do some shopping - any link to Amazon or Dell, plus Apple, HP, Buy.com, Adobe, Walmart, and TigerDirect.

Those are affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something, the merchants will send me a little money, or possibly a t-shirt. A tuna sandwich. Something, anyway.

As far as I know, your experience is identical whether you start from my page, from another page, or by typing in www.dell.com in your browser. The prices are the same.

Affilliates don't get much - typically it's 1%. I don't get any identification of who clicked from my site or what was purchased, so I'll be equally grateful to each and every one of you if some of you remember to start from my page before you fill your shopping cart.

If you're shopping for a computer, perhaps it will even help. On the bruceb shopping page, under the annoying banners, I'm trying to stay up to date on Dell's special offers for both the Small Business division and the Home & Home Office division. Some of those represent a genuine way to save a few extra dollars for a deal that isn't easy to find on the Dell site otherwise. Take a look before you buy something, just in case!

Oh, and if you're buying a iPod, Apple is just great to deal with directly - same price as everybody else, cool gift box, and incredibly fast shipping. Don't forget to buy a gift certificate from Gelaskins to go with the iPod!

Thank you! Happy holidays!

Labels: Acrobat, Apple, bruceb, business, hardware, software

posted by bruceb at 12/10/2007 12:55:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT 8 TIPS & TRICKS

It's easy to start using Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, but it is also full of features that only emerge after a little digging. Here are some cool things that I didn't know about - if you're already using Acrobat 8, see if any of them will make your life easier!

These tips come from today's TechnoLawyer newsletter - credit goes to New York attorney Roy Greenberg, who wrote the original column. TechnoLawyer keeps its materials behind a wall - join their mailing lists or become a member if you want access to more tips from this article or any of the other TechnoLawyer resources.

1. USE ACROBAT'S SNAPSHOT TOOL

Acrobat has a built-in tool for making a quick snapshot of a portion of a PDF, similar to Vista's snipping tool for screen shots. Click on Tools / Select & Zoom / Snapshot Tool, then highlight the area to be copied. (You can highlight any area up to a full PDF page; you're not limited to what's visible onscreen.) When you release the mouse button, the selection will be put on the clipboard, ready to be pasted into an e-mail or a Word document.

2. USE THUMBNAIL IMAGES FOR DOCUMENT NAVIGATION

"When you send a PDF document to your client, use the "Initial View" feature to help your client navigate through the document. I have sent clients multi-page documents, only to later learn that the client never realized that the document consisted of more than one page. I now send clients a PDF in which the left-hand panel consists of thumbnail images of all of the pages of the document. The client can see any page by clicking the thumbnail image. As many programs use such images, most clients instinctively understand how to navigate through the document.

"Here's how to set it up: Press Ctrl-D. Choose the "Initial View" tab. Select "Pages Panel and Page" from the drop down menu. Press the "Apply" button and save the document. When your client opens the document, he'll see both the first page of your document and the pages panel consisting of thumbnail images."

3. USE THE ORGANIZER

Use the Acrobat Organizer to get a unique visual display of PDF documents. The Organizer (click on File / Organizer / Open Organizer) gives immediate access to all the PDFs you've opened during the last week, month, or year, or gives you a visual look at PDF files on the hard drive. It also has a feature called "Collections" where you can drag frequently used PDFs and keep them sorted, without moving them from where they're stored on the hard drive.

4. SEND WEB PAGES INSTEAD OF URLS

"Use Acrobat to capture Web pages. This is a separate function from printing a Web page using the PDF driver. When the page is captured, all of the links on the page remain active. When you click a link in the PDF, the selected page will open in your browser. You can send clients Web pages of interest instead of Web addresses (i.e, URLs). Send a brief note explaining that the PDF Web page has all of the functions of the original Web page.

"Home or opening pages from a large Web site are often a good choice. I often send clients the first page from my local town government's web site. My client can then choose the item of interest on the page, click the link, and find what they are seeking. You can capture the Web page by choosing "File / Create PDF / From Web Page" from the menu bar in Acrobat. You'll need to enter the URL of the page that you want to convert to a PDF, but you can cut and paste the URL from your browser."

Labels: Acrobat, software

posted by bruceb at 12/05/2007 12:10:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT 8.1.1 UPDATE
Do not open unexpected PDF e-mail attachments!

Do not open any unexpected e-mail attachments!

Got that? Good. Then we can move on to an important security update from Adobe.

• If you are running Windows XP and Acrobat 8 (any version), then open Acrobat and click on Help / Check for updates. You should be offered an update to version 8.1.1. Install it!
• If you are running Windows XP and Acrobat 7 Reader, then go to the Adobe web site and update to the Acrobat 8 Reader.
• If you are running Windows XP and Acrobat 7 Standard or Professional, then check Acrobat for updates every few days. Adobe will release a similar patch for version 7 soon.
• If you are running Windows Vista, you are not vulnerable to this security issue.

Earlier this month, the bad guys discovered a way to create a PDF with a virus - a PDF that would execute malicious code on a computer when the PDF was opened. The first bad PDFs are now turning up in e-mail messages sent from Russian servers with attachments named YOUR_BILL.PDF or INVOICE.PDF. The names will undoubtedly change quickly. Adobe's fix prevents the virus from working.

Here's an article about the security issue and Adobe's new fix, and here's Adobe's security advisory about the version 8.1.1 update.

Be safe out there!

Labels: Acrobat, security

posted by bruceb at 10/25/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT & PDF CLONES
Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional is highly polished software for creating PDFs from scanned documents or onscreen files, and it adds the ability to use PDFs for other purposes, from e-mail archives to Bates-numbered document storage and production. Here's my first thoughts about the upgrade to version 8.

Acrobat is an expensive piece of software - $160/computer for an upgrade version of Acrobat 8 Professional, $450 for the full version if you don't have a license code to qualify for an upgrade. There are competing products that claim to be able to produce PDFs for $29, but there are some good reasons to pay the price for the real thing.

Here's a blog that briefly describes the open nature of the PDF format, which allows competitors to sell cheap software for creating PDF files, as well as allowing software to be sold with built-in PDF converters. (Microsoft offers a PDF add-in for Office 2007; Quickbooks is set up to print invoices as PDFs; WordPerfect has a built-in PDF print driver.)

The article goes on to highlight some of the shortcomings of the third party products. Some of it misses the point - the blog is sponsored by Adobe, after all. In my mind there are two important reasons to spend the money for the full version of Acrobat 8:

• There are differences between the PDF files produced by different versions of the PDF format. The clone makers either work from an old PDF format that is not completely compatible, or they do a cruddy job of designing their software. One of the comments below the blog points out that when you use the clone products, you're much more likely to deal with the "inability to open a file, discrepancies between on screen image and printing output, unpredictable results when using the clipboard, problems with text fields, or problems editing content."
• Acrobat 8 is successful in large part because its elegant and economical design makes it easy to use, and it adds features that are meaningful. Example: when a document is scanned with Acrobat 8, the program automatically does OCR and saves the text invisibly as part of the PDF file. Indexing programs (Windows Vista, or Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP) then allow you to search instantly for text inside the PDFs.

Many small offices spend surprisingly little on the software that they rely on to get their work done. We have long accepted the cost of Microsoft Office as a basic price of running a computer in a business. Acrobat 8 belongs on that list as well.

Labels: Acrobat, law

posted by bruceb at 9/13/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ADOBE ACROBAT 8.1 UPDATE
If you're using Adobe Acrobat 8 (Standard or Professional), you will likely be prompted to install an update to version 8.1 released over the weekend by Adobe. It's a worthwhile update but make sure you have a few minutes free - it took more than ten minutes to install on my speedy desktop computer. If you're not prompted automatically, you can install it manually from this page.

The update significantly improves Acrobat's compatibility with Vista and Office 2007, and includes a fair number of bug fixes - it looks worthwhile for Windows XP and Office 2003 users also. This page has more details on the specific issues addressed by the update.

Labels: Acrobat, software

posted by bruceb at 6/11/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

OFFICE 2007 MOMENTS
The "ribbons" in Microsoft Word 2007 and Excel 2007 are better organized than the menus and toolbars in Office 2003, but I'm also going through odd moments of confusion or frustration. I'm still not ordering Office 2007 on new office computers.

A few random examples:

• Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is polished and wonderful - but it does not integrate with Office 2007 yet. No toolbar buttons to create or e-mail a PDF with Acrobat until Adobe releases a patch later this summer. (Microsoft has a free add-in to create PDFs from Office 2007 programs but it's pretty barebones.)
• The envelope feature in Word is virtually unchanged from Word 2003, so it's still nearly impossible to print a customized return address with a company logo. (There's an old workaround that goes back to Office 97. It still works - but why is it this hard?)
• There's a bug somewhere that's causing files to become read-only while they're open in Office programs. Lots of people are reporting that files opened from a network share in an Office 2007 program can't be saved without multiple error messages about "network or file permission errors." It happened to me today. At one time it appeared that Windows Desktop Search 2.6 might be to blame; now it might be a Vista bug, or it might be an Office bug, or it might be offline files, or it might be sunspots.
• The new ribbon organizes a lot of commands, but it's oddly difficult to get to the commands that aren't on the ribbon. Maybe they've been left off because I shouldn't need them any more, but I've had to go through an exercise a couple of times now to find a command that disappeared.

You won't be unhappy if you get Office 2007 but I'm still searching for reasons that you'll think things have improved since Office 2003.

Labels: Acrobat, Microsoft, Office

posted by bruceb at 4/03/2007 12:36:00 AM | permalink

COMPARING PDFS
PDF has become the standard format for most documents exchanged in the business world, and it is increasingly used to exchange documents during negotiation or collaboration. Microsoft Word has well-known tools for comparing drafts of documents and redlining changes, but the process has always been more difficult with PDFs.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional can compare two PDFs and generate a report that compares the two versions side by side and highlights any changes or deletions. Here's an explanation of the document comparison feature.

It's yet another reason that Acrobat 8 Professional has become an essential program on any office computer - one that should be purchased and installed as readily as Microsoft Office. (Here are some other reasons.) The improvements in the interface are so compelling that it is a worthwhile upgrade from any previous version of Acrobat.

Labels: Acrobat

posted by bruceb at 3/30/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ADOBE ACROBAT 8 PROFESSIONAL
PDFs have become the common language for shared documents in most businesses and law offices, but the frequent upgrades to Acrobat have been uncompelling, with a confusing interface and puzzling features.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is the upgrade we've been waiting for. Law offices should elevate it to the rank of a basic tool, as necessary and unavoidable as Word and Outlook. The interface has been simplified and features have been added or - just as important - brought forward into the light.

There are many ways to use the program now that go beyond simple PDF creation, especially in law offices. Here's an article that summarizes many of the features that will be most appealing to lawyers. There are a few that stand out:

• For scanning, Acrobat can now take over from Paperport 9, which is aging badly and appears to have no future. Acrobat can talk directly to most scanners (no intervening stop at the dialog box provided by the scanner manufacturer), scan multiple page documents into a single file, and does an extra invaluable trick: it immediately and transparently does OCR on the scanned image and stores the text inside the PDF file, where it can be indexed by a desktop search program.
• Acrobat can add Bates numbers to a collection of PDF files - a couple of clicks replaces the endless process with the stamper and the copy machine.
• Acrobat has gotten far better at creating a PDF of an e-mail message from Outlook that can be stored with other documents. There's also an interesting trick where it creates a "PDF package" from an entire Outlook folder or set of folders - capable of being sorted by date/sender/subject/etc., but stored with other documents in the file system. And again, Windows Desktop Search with the Acrobat add-in will index the text in those files and include them in search results.
• The functions for forms have been significantly enhanced. It's now drop-dead easy to create fillable forms, replacing the rudimentary "FormTyper" in Paperport.

All this comes at a significant price - $159 if you have a serial number from an earlier version so you can qualify for an "upgrade," and $459 (!) for the full version. (Make a note that there are two upgrade versions, depending on which prior versions you own - the same price but different SKUs. I don't know why - just make sure you get the right one.) This looks so good that it moves into the "necessity" column for many offices, on some if not all desktops. [Originally posted 12/31/06, bumped 01/11/07]

Labels: Acrobat, law

posted by bruceb at 1/11/2007 10:00:00 PM | permalink

ACROBAT UPDATE
Adobe's PDF format has become the universal standard for exchanging business files. Here are some things you might not know.

• Acrobat 7.0 is virtually identical to Acrobat 6.0. There is one difference, but it is a critical one: Acrobat 7.0 opens like lightning. Click on the icon and bang! the program is onscreen. Almost everyone has spent too many hours watching the Acrobat 6.0 logo remain interminably onscreen while the program loads; you understand how important this is. It's true for the Reader as well as the full versions of Acrobat.
• For that reason, if you're using Acrobat Reader 6.0, click on Help / Check for updates now and make your way to the current version of Reader 7.0. You'll have to run the update repeatedly, you may have to close and restart Reader when prompted, you might not want to "schedule automatic updates" (just one more background service to slow down the computer), and you should keep an eye out to remove the Yahoo Toolbar that's automatically installed if you're not watching.
• Adobe created Acrobat Elements last year. It's a slim version of Acrobat licensed cheaply to big companies; currently the minimum sale is 100 licenses. It creates PDFs with a minimum of fuss, including access to security features; many people don't need the additional features of the expensive Standard or Professional editions. But you can't buy Acrobat Elements in the stores.
• Dell purchased a volume license for Acrobat Elements 6.0 and started offering it on some new desktop computers for somewhere between twenty and forty dollars. It's a great deal! If you can get your hands on the CD that ships with that new Dell computer, there's no license check to prevent you from installing it on another computer.
• But it would be wrong.
• Adobe has now released Acrobat Elements 7.0, but apparently Dell hasn't upgraded its license; as of today, Dell is still offering Acrobat Elements 6.0.
• Last thing: please practice with your scanner so you don't e-mail 10 and 20Mb PDF files. They don't have to be that size and big file attachments are killing e-mail systems left and right.

Labels: Acrobat

posted by bruceb at 10/21/2005 12:36:00 PM | permalink

PDF SECURITY
Maybe you saw the news item - classified information about the shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq was found by journalists in a PDF document given to the media by the US military.

Here's an article with more information about why the text was not secured in the PDF file. The military had blacked out parts of the document, but had not removed the text underneath or properly secured the file.

The security in Adobe Acrobat is confusing. Although the perception is that PDF files cannot be changed, the reality is that Acrobat files can be edited in ways that are difficult to track. If you are dealing with sensitive material, you need to spend some time learning Acrobat's security system!

Labels: Acrobat, security

posted by bruceb at 5/06/2005 10:35:00 AM | permalink