The eSeminar featured solutions for ad hoc review using Acrobat and also audited, workflow-based review using the Adobe eSubmissions Solutions Accelerator.

Here, you can view the slides from today's session.

I've stored these on my Acrobat.com account so you can view a Flash preview or download the PDF which includes speaker notes.

Read the rest of the entry to get to the downloadable slides.

The links below will take you to my Acrobat.com account where you can download the materials.

If you have trouble downloading the file:
1) Make sure you have turned off pop-up blockers or checked browser security
2) Ensure that your company has not blocked access to acrobat.com

Main Slides

eSubmissions Solution Accelerator Slides

Yep, that means you can have a close personal experience with Rick Borstein and receive a three-hour demonstration of Adobe Acrobat 9.

Free breakfast included . . . what's not to like?

Oh, the features! See PDF Portfolios, forms, redaction, conversion tips, export to Word and Excel, security and a lot more.

Read on for a full agenda and details.

9:00 - Registration and Full Breakfast Buffet
9:30 - Acrobat Resource Guide
9:35 - Acrobat 9 Pro Demonstration
11:00 - BREAK
11:50 - Acrobat 9 Pro Demo (continued)
12:30 - Adobe Prize Drawing and Wrap-up

What We'll Cover

• Assemble documents and correspondence in a single, well-organized PDF Portfolio, and even add multimedia and 3D images. All in a single PDF!
• Learn how to export PDF documents to editable formats like Word and Excel
• Take advantage of powerful document comparison tools to quickly detect changes between documents.
• Transform static electronic forms into interactive forms with just a few clicks.
  • See how to collect data from forms
• Deliver multimedia to anybody because the entire Acrobat product line— including Adobe Reader— can natively play Flash content.
• Use Acrobat to apply passwords, set permissions, and permanently remove sensitive information— so you can feel confident your work is safe.
• Learn how to securely redact documents to protect company or client secrets
• Learn how to comment on PDF documents and collaborate with other reviewers. You'll even see how to review video

Some of my Excel files contain more than  one worksheet. I would like to convert the second worksheet in an Excel file to the same PDF.

I have over 1000 Excel documents to convert to PDF as part of a regulatory filing. Is there a way to convert these all to PDF in batch?

I'll tackle both of these needs in this article.

Converting Multiple Worksheets

Fortunately, Acrobat 8 and later can easily convert all of the worksheets in your Excel files to PDF:

When you use the PDF Maker in Acrobat 9, you have some additional options to select just the worksheets needed:

A) Choose options to convert all worksheets, the currently selected worksheet or a subset of the worksheets.

B) To choose some worksheets, but not others, select from the list on the left and use the Add or Remove buttons to move them to the list on the right.

C) Click the Convert to PDF button to complete the process

The result is a nicely bookmarked PDF that looks like this:

What about batch conversion?

If you want to convert many Excel documents in batch to PDF, there are a few additional tricks involved. Read on learn how in the rest of the article.

Acrobat makes a distinction between the settings you employ inside an application like Excel to convert to PDF (the Excel PDF Maker) and settings you use to convert in bulk via Acrobat.

Acrobat generally ignores some of the personal settings you've made in the PDF Maker. Instead, you'll need to set Acrobat application preferences to get Excel file conversion to work the way you want. Here's how:

1. Choose Edit—> Preferences
   
   
2. The Preferences window appears:
   
   A) Select Convert to PDF
   B) Choose Microsoft Excel
   C) Click the Edit Settings button
   
   
3. The Edit Settings window opens:
   
   A) Choose the PDF conversion setting needed. I chose a custom setting I created.
   B) Enable "Convert entire Excel workbook"
   
   
4. Click OK twice to exit Preferences

Converting Multiple Excel Files to PDF: Not Batch

If you have Acrobat Standard, you can convert multiple Excel files to PDF. The limitation is that they all need to be in the same folder.

1. Quit Excel if it is already open
2. Choose File—> Create PDF from File and open the folder containing the Excel documents. Select them all and click OK.

Acrobat will convert each Excel document to PDF and open it. You will need to individually save each PDF docuemnt at the end of the process.

True Batch Conversion of Excel to PDF

If you have Acrobat Pro (or Pro Extended) you can take advantage of batch sequences to automate the conversion process.

An Acrobat Batch Sequence allows you to specify a number of operations to be made to a file. The following section describes how to build a very simple sequence.

To create a Batch Process to convert many text files, follow these steps:

1. Choose Advanced—>Document Processing—>Batch Processing
2. Click the New Sequence button. Name the sequence and click OK.
3. The Edit Batch Sequence window will appear.
   

   (A) Set Run Commands on "Selected Folder" . Then click the Browse button and locate the folder containing your source Excel files

(B) Click the Source File Options button. This window allows you to choose which types of files will be converted.

By default, any of the types of files listed will be converted to PDF. If you only wanted to convert the Excel files found in the source folder, only select Microsoft Excel.

(C) Select the output location for the resulting PDFs. Choose Specific Folder from the list and click the Browse button to locate an output folder

(D) Click the Output Options button. This window allows you to rename the file after conversion to PDF. In the example below, I added a suffix to the file name.

Click OK twice.

Running the Batch Excel Conversion Sequence

To run the batch sequence, follow the steps below.

1. Choose Advanced—>Document Processing—>Batch Processing
2. The Batch Sequence Window appears:
   
   

A) Choose a sequence from the list on the right

B) Click the Run Sequence Button

Further Considerations

The workflow above could be adapted for any of the file types which Acrobat can convert such as Word, PPT, etc.

Batch Sequences may also be used to create Headers and Footers that number pages, add watermarks and much more.

After creating a batch sequence, click the Select Commands button.

You can then choose from many different commands (on the left) and add them to the list on the right.

Converting Multiple Excel Files to a Single PDF

This is easy to do in both Acrobat 8 and 9, Standard or Pro!

Choose File—>Combine—> Merge Files into a Single PDF

The window allows you to select many types of files and even select a set of worksheets from individual documents.

So, there you are, alone in your office staring at a PDF document wishing you had access to the original data. What do you do?

Fortunately, Acrobat 9.1 offers a couple of different ways to export to Excel.

1. Select table and open in Excel
   This allows you to select a portion of a page and open it in Excel.
   
   
2. Export as Tables in Excel
   This method uses some artificial intelligence to convert multiple page PDF documents to multiple worksheets in an XML-based spreadsheet file. It works best on files which were converted directly from Excel to PDF.

Acrobat generally will usually do a pretty good job converting the text, but formatting and column widths will look different than the original. Acrobat only copies over the text. Formulas will not convert. Do not expect 100% fidelity.

In the full article, you'll receive my usual step-by-step instructions.

I've had better luck using this method for scanned documents and documents which were not originally spreadsheets.

How to use it:

1. Open a PDF and OCR if it was originally scanned
   Document—> OCR Text Recognition
2. Select the Select Text tool (cursor)
   
3. Hold down the ALT (CMD on the Mac) key to make a rectangular selection over a table in the document.
   Your cursor will change shape to:
   
   
4. With the text still selected, right-click and choose “Open Table in Spreadsheet”
   
5. The table data will open in Excel
   
   

Converting to Excel from PDF: Save As Tables in Excel Spreadsheet

This method allows you export a multiple page PDF to multiple Tables in an Excel file. It seems to work best on documents which were:

1. Converted directly to PDF from Excel
2. Converted using Acrobat (rather than a clone)

How to use it:

1. Open the PDF you want to convert
2. OCR the document if it was originally scanned.
   Choose Document—> OCR Text Recognition
3. Choose File—> Save As
4. From the Type list at the bottom of the window, choose Tables in Excel Spreadsheet
   
5. Click Save
   
   

Batch Converting PDF to Excel

Have a lot of PDFs you want to convert to Excel? No problem! This works in any version of Acrobat 9.

1. Choose File—> Export—> Export Multiple Files
2. Click the Add Files button at the top of the window and locate your source PDFs
   
   
3. The Output Options window appears:
   
   A) Click Browse to select a folder for the Excel output
   B) If desired, add a prefix or suffix to the filename
   C) Change Export to “Tables in Excel”
4. Click OK

Large Life Science corporations centrally distribute software to users, most often on the Windows platform.

In this article, I'll discuss the tools and techniques that are available to help IT personnel deploy and update versions of Acrobat 7, 8 and 9, including the free Adobe Reader.

First, I'll show you where you can download the apps and our tools for deployment. In the full article, I'll discuss how to "chain" installs, expand Adobe Reader, and use the Adobe Customization Wizard to streamline installation.

Get the Updates and the Deployment Tools

Various updates are available depending on the version of Acrobat and/or Reader you have installed. To make it easier to customize Acrobat, Adobe offers installation tools which help you remove earlier versions of Acrobat, serialize the product, and set a wide variety of program options.

The links below are for Windows versions. Mac Acrobat users can find updates here.

Adobe generally does not issue complete, new packages for dot releases, so it's important to properly "chain" these installs. I'll also discuss how to expand the Adobe Reader to make it installable, and discuss the Acrobat Customization Wizard and other resources available. Read on for this information.

NOTE: If you receive my blog via email, make sure you click on the article title to read it on my blog.

Say you're a large Adobe customer and have a license for Acrobat 9.0. You're just about ready to deploy the software and you hear about a security update. How do you deploy both the original 9.0 release and the 9.1 patch?

In order to push down both the base product and updates, you need to "chain" installations together. This can help you avoid reboots on the user systems and significantly reduce deployment time.

Chaining Installations of Acrobat 9.1

Download this preliminary document (Acrobat 9.1 Chaining Instructions) to learn how to chain installations. I suspect Adobe will have an official Knowledge Base article on this soon.

Chaining Installations of Acrobat 8.1.4

See this tech note: Install all Acrobat 8 patches in one step with Adobe Bootstrapper and patch sequencing

Chaining Installations of Acrobat 7.x

Download Chaining Together Acrobat/Reader 7.0 to 7.0.3 for Enterprise Deployment (PDF)

Expanding the Adobe Reader

When you download the Adobe Reader, it is in a highly compressed format provided by NetOpsystems (NOSSO). Follow the instructions in Extracting the Adobe Reader 9.x MSI installer for enterprise deployment to create an MSI to install.

Acrobat 9 Customization Wizard: What does it do?

The Customization Wizard eases the task of customizing the installation of Acrobat for your organization. Using it, you can easily modify the installer via a transform file (MST file) without altering the original package (MSI file).

Here are a few things you can do:

• Set up silent installation and pre-serialization
  
• Remove previous versions of Acrobat and Reader
• Install additional languages
  
• Suppress the EULA and registration prompts
  
• Customize key application preferences — turn off automatic updates, add and set default job options, and customize collaboration and security settings
• Push down your organization's settings for stamps, watermarks and backgrounds
  
• Remove shortcuts from the desktop and the Start menu
  
• Edit each Adobe Acrobat application's registry and installer tables
  
• Customize file attachment handling within PDF files, including specifying which file types you want to block
  
• Add or edit files that will be installed, including customized JavaScript or plug-ins
• Deploy custom Portfolio navigators

What settings should be pushed down?

There is no rule that fits every organization. Some research into your user base is helpful to find out what features they are using. If you have a trainer on staff for Acrobat, you should consult with them. A few suggestions for the life science community:

• PDF Maker  and Distiller Settings
  Various countries have standards for the PDF Version for regulatory filings. In the US and most of the world, PDF 1.4 is required.
  
  
• Custom Stamps
  Do you use custom stamps with your company logo, etc.? You can push these down to all users by placing the stamp file in the appropriate directory.
  
  
• Headers and Footers
  You can push down a default set of Header/Footer stamps to match those used by your regulatory personnel.
  
  
• Watermarks
  An important security step is to watermark documents to alert readers about the confidential or publish status of documents. For example, you might add a "Confidential" watermark to certain documents or a "Draft" watermark to document which are not yet ready for publication. It's much easier to walk a user through how to use preset watermarks than to create them from scratch.
  
  
• Review and Data Collection Servers
  You can set up pointers to internal review servers (SharePoint or Network folders) which allow your users to easily take advantage of Shared Review and Form Data Collection in Acrobat.
  
  
• Security and Digital Signature Settings
  You can set up Acrobat to use LDAP servers where you store PKI credentials or enable SAFE signatures.
  
  
• Language Files
  What languages do your users need to read documents or create them? The customization wizard allows you to choose which font sets are needed.

How do I learn about the Customization Wizard and Deploying Acrobat?

My colleague Joel Geraci is Adobe's Acrobat Technical Evangelist.

Joel offers a very nice deployment toolkit on his IT Matters blog which includes documentation and video instruction for deploying Acrobat 9. In this toolkit, you'll find:

• Deploying Adobe Acrobat and Reader 9
  Video presentation on deploying Acrobat 9.
• Acrobat 9 Security Administration Guide
• Adobe Acrobat 9 Deployment on Citrix Presentation Server
• Customization Wizard 9 Datasheet
• Adobe Acrobat 9 Deployment on Microsoft Windows Group Policy and the Active Directory service
• Adobe Acrobat 9 Deployment on Microsoft Systems Management Server
• Adobe Acrobat 9 Deployment on Microsoft Windows Terminal Services

Joel has also recorded an on-demand which covers Acrobat 8.

Acrobat 8 Customization Tool eSeminar on Demand (45 min)

Using SAFE- BioPharma Digital Signatures in Adobe Acrobat 9

I'll post a link to the recording soon.

I've included three downloads that you might find useful:

1. Adobe Acrobat Slides
   Go over the digital signing process in Acrobat
   
   
2. SAFE Slides
   Covers the business benefits of using SAFE signatures
   
   
3. Adobe LiveCycle eSubmissions Solutions Accelerator
   Slides on Adobe's server-based review and approval systems which can be part of an audited, CFR-Part 11 workflow
   
   
4. Digital Signatures Cheat Sheet
   Helps you understand the various status messages associated with digital signatures

Read on to get the good stuff.

The files are in Flash Preview Widgets on my Acrobat.com account. Sometimes the widgets take a little while to load, so please be patient.

You can preview the files in t he widget. If you want to download them, click the menu at the upper right of the widget.

Enjoy!

Adobe Acrobat Slides

SAFE Slides

Adobe LiveCycle eSubmissions Solutions Accelerator

Digital Signatures Cheat Sheet

One point I try to get across about Acrobat is that it can be used for far more than just creating a PDF as part of an electronic submission.

Acrobat is terrific as a general tool for any knowledge worker. Need to capture information from a web site? Scan in paper documents? Combine files into something well-organized to send out?

Yes, yes, yes.

Click on the Continue Reading link below to access two documents:

1. Slides from the events
2. Comparison of Acrobat features from version 7, 8 and 9

Enjoy!

The files below are stored on my Acrobat.com account.

The documents will load into the Flash widgets below. Please be patient as sometimes they take a bit of time to load on a slower connection.

To download or view larger, click the menu in the upper right corner of the widget.

Slides

Acrobat 7-8-9 Comparison

PDF Document Review eSeminar:
Ad Hoc or Audited Options for Life Sciences

I've posted two sets of slides. The first set covers Shared Review in Acrobat. The second set covers the LiveCycle eSubmissions Solution Accelerator.

To recap, the seminar covered:

Adobe experts will show you how to encourage active participation by your employees and accelerate the document review process. Whether you need informal document review or an audited CFR-Part 11 compliant review process, Adobe offers solutions which leverage the Adobe Acrobat product family, including the free Adobe Reader.

Attend this free seminar and you will:

• Learn how to enable ad hoc review workflows using Adobe Acrobat and the free Adobe Reader
• Discover how Adobe LiveCycle server solutions can create, route and manage audited review processes
• See how multiple users, in real time, can add notes and comments to PDF documents
• Discover how to create custom stamps and other annotations
• Find out how to use network folders or Microsoft SharePoint to host ad hoc reviews

Click onward to download the slides . . .

The slides are in PDF format and are posted in an open area on my acrobat.com account.

Two widgets will appear below. Please be patient as they sometimes take a few seconds to load. You can page through the PDF using the widget.

Click the Menu in the upper right corner of the widget to download the files.

Enjoy!

Shared Review in Acrobat Slides

LiveCycle eSubmissions Solution Accelerator Slides

In a previous article on Batch OCR, I discussed using Acrobat Pro to create a Batch Sequence to process multiple files.

In Acrobat 9 Standard and Pro, there is now an easy way to OCR multiple files using a new feature— Recognize Text in Multiple Files using OCR:

Read on to learn how to use this new feature.

To use this new feature in Acrobat 9:

1. Choose OCR Text Recognition—> Recognize Text in Multiple Files using OCR
   
   
2. Click the Add Files button at the top of the window
   
   Add Files allows you select one or more files from different folders
   Add Folders will OCR every file recursively in a folder
   Add Open Files will OCR files open in the Acrobat application
   
   
3. After adding files, click the OK button.
   
   
4. The Output Options screen appears:
   
   A) You can overwrite the files or save a copy to another folder
   B) You can rename the files with a prefix or suffix. e.g. document_ocr.pdf
   C) Enable Fast Web View which makes PDFs view faster on the web
   D) PDF Optimizer (Pro only) allows you to specify PDF versions and resample images
   
   
5. Click OK.
   
   
6. The Recognize Text - Settings window appears:
   
   - Choose the language needed.
   - Set the PDF Output style. You might try the new ClearScan style which smooths type
   
   
7. Click OK and Acrobat will begin processing your files and the Progress window will appear:
   
   Any errors will be displayed in this window.

I can't OCR using Acrobat. What does the "renderable text" warning mean?

One OCR error you might encounter is "The page contains renderable text."

When this error is indicated, the page contains vector text elements:

1. Acrobat cannot OCR a document which has text elements on top of image elements.
   

   Acrobat 8.1 and up will ignore renderable text objects within a margin defined as 20% of the width or height of the page.

   For example, for a standard 8.5" by 11" page:

   • Left Margin = 2.2" (8.5" X .20)
   • Top Margin = 1.7" (11" X .20)

   

   Here's a PDF version of the above illustration which you can use to check your own files.

2. Acrobat cannot OCR a document that was output from an electronic file (such as Word) directly to PDF.
• If you zoom into the document in question and it looks very clear, that is likely the issue.
• Good news, these documents are already searchable.
3. Acrobat cannot OCR a file that does not contain an image.
• You won't be able to OCR a Visio drawing containing only vector elements, for example.
• More good news. When converted directly from a CAD program, the text is already searchable.
4. Acrobat cannot OCR a document that has already been OCRd using the ClearScan option

Final Thoughts

OCR is a great solution if you only have access to paper documents. However, I see many companies using paper-based workflows when there are clearly better, "greener" alternatives.

Business-critical workflows based on paper are fragile, prone to error and costly. Look into using PDF forms to collect data. Use SAFE digital signatures instead of "wet" signatures. Use electronic document review instead of paper.

The Reader update is also available via FTP:
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/8.x/8.1.3/

Note: Acrobat 9.0 and Adobe Reader 9.0 do not require a security update.

What's fixed?

The Acrobat/Adobe Reader 8.1.3 Release Notes contain an exhaustive list of the fixes.

Many of the fixes address dynamic forms issues. If your organization uses dynamic forms and Adobe's LiveCycle  server products, you should carefully read the Release Notes above.

Acrobat 8.1.3 also addresses some critical security issues.

You might want to read the Acrobat 8.1.3 Security Bulletin.

PDF Scientific Notebooks: Signed, Safe and Defensible

As I mentioned in a recent article Capture Discoveries in a PDF Lab Notebook, PDF Portfolios offer an interesting platform for preserving scientific research.

Read on for a link to the slides from the event.

I placed the slides on my Acrobat.com account which offers anyone 5 GBs of free storage. What a deal!

I used one of the cool Flash widgets to place the presentation on this page.

It takes a little bit for the widget to download, so please be patient.

Click the Menu button at the top of the widget to download the presentation.

Enjoy!

Today, my colleague Mark Middleton and did a 1-hour SharePoint eSeminar. Our Partner OmTool also participated; they offer the free Swiftwriter plug-in for Acrobat that provides check-in/out from SharePoint.

Watch Archived SharePoint eSeminar (Opens in a new window)

If you are not very familiar with SharePoint, it’s hard to describe this popular Microsoft product in a sentence. SharePoint may be used as a web portal, an enterprise search engine, as a collaboration tool, for content management and more.

You probably want to get the most you can from SharePoint in your organization. Since PDFs are one of the most frequently encountered document types in enterprises, Adobe is interested in SharePoint, too.

Read on to view the slides— with narrative sticky notes — from the presentation.

I've placed the slides from the eSeminar on my Acrobat.com account.

Below is a Flash-based widget that allows you to preview the PDF and to download it (click the menu at the top).

Sometimes the widget takes a few seconds to load, so please be patient.

Enjoy!

She had recently migrated from Acrobat 5 to Acrobat 7. In the course of our conversation, I discovered that her department hadn't received any training on the transition.

Acrobat 7 introduced a new user interface and she couldn't find the Previous View and Next View buttons.

If you are migrating from Acrobat 5 or 6 to newer version of Acrobat, there's a good chance things will look different, perhaps a lot different to you.

In this article, I'll talk about how to get back the Previous View and Next View buttons, and also generally discuss how to customize toolbars to save time and improve productivity.

The user interface changes between versions of Acrobat. Depending on the outcome of focus groups, product management decisions, or growth in features, Adobe sometimes chooses to move functions in or out of toolbars.

For example, here is the default toolbar after a fresh install of Acrobat 9:

The arrow above is pointing to the Page Navigation toolbar which is only showing three of the seven possible tools available:

1. Previous Page
2. Next Page
3. Previous View
4. Next View
5. First Page
6. Last Page
7. Page Number

Customizing the Page Navigation Toolbar

To modify the toolbar buttons (and keep it that way for future sessions), follow these steps:

1. Open Acrobat, but close any documents that are open.
2. Right-click on one of the buttons such as   in the Page Navigation toolbar.
   
3. Choose the buttons you would like on the Page Navigation toolbar. Alternately, choose Show All Tools from this menu.
   
   
4. The Page Navigation toolbar now looks like this:
   
5. Quit Acrobat. The expanded toolbar will be available for future sessions.

Seeing Toolbars and Adding Tools

If you want to get the most out of your software, curiosity is a good trait to have!  Did you know you could do all of these things with toolbars?

See available Toolbars and open them
Choose View —> Toolbars and select a toolbar. A check mark will appear next to the toolbar name to indicate that it is displayed.

To hide all toolbars
Choose View—>Toolbars—> Hide Toolbars

To see all of the tools on all of the toolbars and show or hide as needed (Acrobat 8+)
Choose View—> Toolbars—> More Tools
The More Tools window allows you to turn on or off any tool in one convenient window.

Working with Toolbars

Toolbars may open docked in the toolbar area or in a floating window, depending upon the way the toolbar was last used:

It's easy to dock or undock toolbars to get just the configuration you need.

To dock or undock a toolbar

Drag the grabber bar from the toolbar into (or out of) a docked toolbar.

Rearrange the docked toolbars
Place your cursor on the toolbar grabber bar to drag it from one position to another:

Reset toolbars to default configuration

Choose View—> Toolbars—> Reset Toolbars

Lock or unlock the toolbar area

Locking the toolbars prevents you from accidentally moving or rearranging them.

Choose View—> Toolbars—> Lock Toolbars

Curiosity = Good

Chances are that there are useful tools in Acrobat that you didn't even know existed. Try right-clicking on any toolbar to see what other tools are available. Or, choose View—> Toolbars to see what else is available.

I'll be blogging about the Properties toolbar in the future. If you can't wait, you should check it out . . . it offers context-sensitive options for almost all of the other toolbars.