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Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) |
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| These three buttons change your Page View between Actual Size, Fit in Window, and Fit Width. The second and third buttons are the most useful. |
Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is becoming an increasingly popular format for the Web. Acrobat combines excellent file size compression with the ability to present many kinds of documents, making it an ideal choice for Web distribution of information. The Network 2 Website uses Acrobat PDF files for many of its long documents, and for documents with graphics or formatting difficult to translate to Web pages, such as newsletters, brochures and downloadable forms.
Following are some tips for using the free Acrobat Reader software with your Web browser.
Get Acrobat Reader software. The first step is to obtain Acrobat Reader software. It's free from Adobe Systems at www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. The software walks you step by step through installation of Acrobat Reader.
Navigate like a pro. Acrobat Reader offers excellent tools to help you find your way through PDF documents. Along the top of the screen is a row of buttons for commonly used commands to flip through pages, jump to the beginning or end of the document, zoom in or out, and more. Hold your mouse still over each of the buttons for a pop up tip that shows what each button is for. Along the bottom of the screen you can find and change your current page view size, and the total number of pages in the PDF file. Don't forget your keyboard's Page Up, Page Down, and arrow keys also work for navigation.
Needle in a haystack. The Find feature can be very useful when you're searching for a particular word or phrase in a long PDF document. Use the binoculars icon on the toolbar to search to Find the first instance, then the Find Next button just to the right to continue finding instances of your word or phrase throughout a document. (Note that if you're using Acrobat to open your document from the Web, both the Acrobat and Web browser command bars will be in view simultaneously: make sure you use Acrobat's Find feature under the binoculars button, and not your Web browser's similar Find feature on the pull-down menus.)
Making copies. You can save PDF documents and text from the Web.
- If you've already opened the document, you can use the button with the diskette icon at the top left of your screen to save the PDF to your computer's disk.
- If you're on a Web page that links to a PDF file, you can right-click your mouse on the link and choose the Save Target As command, then make sure you select the file type as Adobe Acrobat, or Source, to preserve the PDF format.
- It is also possible to copy portions of text from an Acrobat file. Use the Text Select tool (looks like a letter "T"). If you're copying text from column format, like from a newsletter, get better results with the Column Text tool - you can access this tool by holding down the Text Select tool icon: find additional buttons nested underneath the first icon. Click once and drag the Column Text tool around the borders of columnar text to select text to copy.
Author, author. Don't try to make changes to an Acrobat file, because you probably can't! The free Reader software allows you to only view others' documents. If you want to create your own Acrobat documents, or make changes to existing ones, you'll need to purchase the full Acrobat software package.
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