I’ve worked in technology since before the days of GUIs, so Adobe Acrobat has been nothing new to me over the past 20 years or so. We have all used it. Even the most computer illiterate person in your office has more than likely read a file in PDF format, or perhaps even created one. However, the difference between Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat Pro is amazing, to say the least. I begged for full versions of Acrobat at my last two jobs, only to be told, “We just don’t have it in the budget.” I knew some of the advantages it would offer me in making my tasks easier, but it wasn’t until I delved into it all the way before I realized what I had been truly missing in my whole career. My hunch was correct; this was a program that solved multiple problems that often caused me to want to throw my computer out the window. Let me tell you a few things about it and why you need this!

First of all, Adobe Acrobat Pro does not replace any of your other software. It simply pulls them together to work in harmony and ultimately formats them into clean, non-editable documents, which is the main reason we all love it. However, there are times when Microsoft Word just doesn’t do what it should be doing. For example, recently, I tried to format page numbering. Sounds easy enough, however, I wanted my page one to start on the actual page three of my document. No can do. In Word, one can format page numbering and place it in any corner of the document, and, one can start numbering on any page, but it will not start it with a number that the page is not displaying. In Acrobat Pro, text can be edited, and page numbers can be changed.

Another unique feature of Acrobat Pro is the Portfolio feature. Do you find that you have multiple documents that need to be kept together in one folder? Acrobat Pro goes one step further, and creates a portfolio of all of those documents into one file. Yes, one file. Imagine submitting a bid on a contract and having all of your word documents, spreadsheets and licenses all together for the client to open. No more file hopping. Imagine being a supervisor of several employees; now there’s a way to view performance evaluations from every year, all in one file. Suddenly, you’re not having to open multiple files to obtain information that’s needed. Or suppose you’re working on a group project, and each person is responsible for his or her own part. Once submitted and combined in the portfolio, the final document is ready to view.

Now you must be thinking that all of this can be done just by copying and pasting into Word. Yes and no. In Word, there is all of the opening up of multiple documents, cutting or copying from one document, then keeping track of which one to go back into and paste the information, or even the whole document. The end result is one final .docx document. In Acrobat Pro, the native file extensions from each document are preserved, and each file remains an individual unit.  In fact, if you would rather combine all of your files into one .pdf, there’s a way to accomplish that also, and without all of the copying and pasting.

The ability to save Web pages as a live document is another of the fascinating features in Acrobat Pro, meaning that if you would like to save the Home Page from a company, for example, the links to the company’s other pages would remain active, even when not surfing the Web on a browser!

While there are so many more new and wonderful features, the last one I would like to bring to your attention is the ability to embed audio and video. I have had people who stated that they include the audio version of their blog in a .pdf newsletter sent out to customers; another suggestion includes making major announcements from the corporate office to be embedded into electronic communication to employees. And same for video. How cool for everyone in the company, or outside, to get to watch the interview recognizing the employee of the month, or the CEO’s announcement about the latest products to be released. The sky’s the limit, they say, and with Adobe Acrobat Pro, you’ll reach destinations you never dreamed possible in application software and technology.

To sign up for Adobe Acrobat classes being offered again on April 25-26, 2018, visit LRS Adobe Acrobat and click into the class for the registration button.