Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with acrobat

Numerous .txt to PDF (best options)

cjorgensen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:11:49 -0800

What's the best way to make a PDF of a bunch of plain text files? I have 260+ .txt files I would like to convert into one PDF. Each .txt file is a page or so. I would like each file to be it's own page/story. I use a Mac.

Presume I have access to most programs. Presume I have a passable knowledge of terminal.

I would rather not import each file one at a time. I would prefer not to just combine them into one big file to import and have to flow each page.

My end goal: I want a singular PDF with each .txt file as its own page (so I can reorder as I prefer). What's the best way to do this?

If it matters, each of these pages will be styled identically, but there may be some commentary inserted between pages.

I am willing to buy an app if need be, but cheaper the better.

Free/Open Source Scan-to-PDF Software?

cowbellemoo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:20:19 -0800

What's the best free or open source software (for Windows XP) which will scan multiple pages in a row and output a PDF with zero fuss? I don't really like the software that came with the scanner and I don't want to pay for Acrobat Pro. Currently I'm using OpenOffice Draw, which works fine except for having a few too many mouse clicks between importing each page as a scanned picture -- which are annoying when I'm trying to concentrate on something else while I scan a bunch of things in.

Ideally I'd like to just place a new page, close the lid, click a button, scan, rinse, repeat. That's basically how Acrobat Pro does it, but is there a free/OS alternative that behaves the same way?

2 Sided PDF Conversion

dortmunder — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:57:04 -0800

Is there a way to take a brochure made in Microsoft Publisher 2007 and convert it to a 2 sided PDF that can be printed out and folded as a brochure? I have no problem converting the file, but I cannot, for the life of me find any sort of option for either creating a 2 sided PDF, or for printing a 2 sided document in Acrobat. What am I missing?

How to quickly crop to trim in Acrobat?

TochterAusElysium — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:36:04 -0800

How can I efficiently crop pages to the trim area in Adobe Acrobat 9? I have a large number of PDFs created by InDesign CS4; they have crop marks and a slug. I need a second set of PDFs that are cropped to the documents’ trim areas. I can open each PDF and manually draw in the crop area, but that takes a long time, so I have two questions:

One – is there a script of any kind that will open the PDFs, crop them to the trim area, and re-save them to a different directory? (Free would be great, of course, but pay may work.)

Two – barring that, I’m trying to figure out why Acrobat’s “Crop Pages” dialog seems to offer me the option of cropping a PDF to the trim, but when I select the “TrimBox” option and hit “OK,” nothing changes.

Bear in mind that I don’t care if the PDF’s are “really” cropped; that is, I realize that the information outside the trim area would still be there, but not visible. That’s fine. I just want a way to crop the PDFs to the trim so that other viewers will only see what’s inside the trim, not the crops and slug.

I’m on a Mac, OS 10.5.7; Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro (9.1.1).

Tagging in Acrobat Pro 8

nosila — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:59:38 -0800

I would like to be able to search comments in numerous pdf files at once using Adobe Acrobat Pro 8. Can it be done? Ideally, I would be able to designate a folder to search within. This way, the comments could act as tags. E.g. if I have a folder that is full of articles about Haydn that I've read and marked up, I could easily locate every comment in which I've written "Symphony No. 8." Then I could click on the search result and the appropriate pdf would open magically at the right place.

If this isn't possible in Acrobat Pro 8, any suggestions on how I might do it? I'm willing to entertain the possibility of using other software, though I really like Acrobat Pro aside from this.

Help me pdf in PC!! Please…?

dpcoffin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:51:27 -0800

Acrobat+video filter: Anybody out there ever built a rich-media pdf on a Mac that PC users could view WITHOUT QuickTime? I've tried doing this a variety of ways but so far all my test files have failed on the PCs I have access to. (Embedding .avi video is NOT working; what else to try? Don't want to use Flash because Flash videos can't be closed without exiting the page; incredible!)

Alternatively, anybody know of a rich-media pdf expert/workman that might take a call, do some one-on-one consulting, actually answer an email? Don't mind paying for info (this is definitely work-related!), but not yet willing to fork over $175 to ask Adobe.

Thanks!
(MacPro, Leopard, CS4, Acrobat 9)

alternatives to Acrobat

plague — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:55:47 -0800

What is the best low-cost alternative to Adobe Acrobat Standard? I'm trying a couple out but would like to hear from other users before making a purchase. Without going into detail, let's just say that I hate Adobe and if I had the chance I would fling poo at whoever runs the software activation department for them.

But, I have needs, and when I am not being driven insane by Adobe's activation rigamarole, Acrobat seems to get the job done. Unfortunately, buying a new license for the current Acrobat is too expensive for my organization.

Specific needs:

Add footers and headers, inc. somewhat customizable page numbering (a la Bates stamp)

Crop

Save changes made to fillable forms, then make additional changes, then save them again, etc.

Combine pdfs

Dis-combine pdfs

Multiple page printing (2 in 1, 4 in 1, etc)

Typewriter

Less critical use:

optical character recognition

I am testing out CutePDF writer and pro, and PDFiller. So far, CutePDF is winning the contest on the basis of its being less confounding than PDFiller.

Between CutePDF pro and writer: I think I'd have to get CutePDF pro in order to do everything I need, and I understand that if I buy pro I'll get writer for free - but it seems like they are separate programs, which seems weird. Anybody have any comments on that?

Anyway, before I buy, I'd like to know if any of you have tested these out, and what you think I should know. Also if you have experience with other PDF editors I should be considering, I would appreciate it.

Have I suffered a PDF exploit?

grouse — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:14:46 -0800

I tried to visit the web site of a local business, and a PDF was automatically and unexpectedly downloaded. What was it trying to do, and how can I know whether I avoided the exploit? The web site was orangecab dot net, and its hompeage contains an extraneous seeming iframe for namebrandmart dot cn, with filename in.cgi?income18. Following that with wget as follows (replacing "." with " dot " as necessary)

$ wget http://namebrandmart dot cn/in.cgi?income18

--11:06:12--  http://namebrandmart dot cn/in.cgi?income18

Resolving namebrandmart dot cn... 94.247.3.150

Connecting to namebrandmart dot cn|94.247.3.150|:80... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found

Cookie coming from namebrandmart dot cn attempted to set domain to mmcounter dot com

Cookie coming from namebrandmart dot cn attempted to set domain to mmcounter dot com

Cookie coming from namebrandmart dot cn attempted to set domain to mmcounter dot com

Location: http://freewebhostguide dot com/index.php [following]

That file, in turn, contains an iframe for cache/readme.pdf. That caused Acrobat Reader to stall, but I tried to kill it as quickly as possible. Using Acrobat Reader 8.1.1/WinXPSP2.

What to do now?

Batch processing multiple-page PDFs

Optimus Chyme — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:51:01 -0800

I need to batch process a 54-page PDF through Bridge (or Photoshop) and it doesn't seem to be saving properly. Okay, this is fairly complex but I'll try to explain it briefly. I have a 54-page letter-sized InDesign file; in each page of the ID file is a linked 2"h x 8.5"w image from a 54-page PDF. Page 1 of the ID file corresponds to page 1 of the PDF and so on.

Each page of the linked PDF is a grayscale raster image. Here's the actual question: I need to batch process the PDF such that it runs an action on each page and my output is a different 54-page PDF.

Alternate solution: same as before, except it outputs as 54 different sequentially-numbered files which I can package into a single PDF document via Acrobat.

What I tried was to select the PDF in Bridge, select Tools | Photoshop | Batch, then make sure it was the right action, with destination Save and Close, and run it. Instead of saving and closing, it goes through all 54 files, keeps them open, then throws up the error message "There were no source files that could be opened by Photoshop."

Then I tried it again with a new Action that had Save As TIFF and Close, and tried again. "There were no source files that could be opened by Photoshop." And now I have to close 54 separate, unchanged files again. Dammit.

All I need to do is change the levels on 54 pages and somehow, through any fashion, get 54 TIFFs or PDFs or JPGs or, like BMPs, I don't care. Ideas?

Acrobat 8 Pro help

monkeygenius — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:50:13 -0800

How can I make Acrobat 8 load with my preferences for toolbars? Working on a macbook. Ever since I switched to Acrobat 8 Professional from an older version, using the program has become such a pain in the ass. When I open a new document, there are no toolbars. Going to "show comments and mark-up toolbar" is the quickest way I've found to have the view size and page scrolling options show up on top.

Similarly, in the older version, I could easily pull out a pages sidebar in order to view thumbnails of pages for quick jumping and rearranging pages. I can still access this, though with limited functionality, but only as a floating palette.

Please help me make Acrobat awesome, easy, and ituitive to use again.

How can I increase contrast on a multi-page PDF?

Outis — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:24:53 -0800

How can I quickly and easily increase the contrast on every page of a PDF? I have a PDF that is 200 pages long in which the paper rendered from the scan somewhat grey and some of the text from the opposite side is still visible. I know I just need to increase the contrast a little and it would taken care of. How can I do this? I have many PDF files like this so it's merely a test run.

I'm also hoping to remove some of the annotations someone made to the text before it was scanned. Other suggestions?

I'm on a Mac using Acrobat and and I've got Photoshop if it's absolutely necessary.

Need Adobe Acrobat (8 or higher) help

AstroGuy — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:34:35 -0800

Need help from someone with Acrobat 8 Pro (or higher) to add "usage rights" to a simple PDF file I have a simple form I created in Acrobat 7 Pro based on a Powerpoint document (I have no idea why he did it this way) that my professor used to create a form to be submitted for assignments. No problem, I thought, I'll just export it to a PDF, open it in 7 Pro, add form fields, and then people can use it (with the free Reader) to type in the info, save it, and submit it by email. But then I find out you can't do this in 7, and the resulting PDF will not allow typed in data to be saved by Reader.

I need help from some kind soul that can open this file in Acrobat 8 Pro or higher, enable Usage Rights to allow users with Adobe Reader to save a filled-in form. This is spelled out here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4f31f.

If you can help me, please contact me via MeFi mail and I'll email you the file. Thank you!

How to scrub a .pdf?

umbú — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:05:51 -0800

Acrobat Pro filter: How can I remove unwanted highlighter from a color scanned pdf? I just scanned a chapter from a library book which was annoyingly splattered with haphazard highlighter.

Using Acrobat Pro, what is the best way for me to get rid of this as I make the document black and white without it turning into distracting grayscale?

Easy way to add Print Setup button to Acrobat 8.0's toolbar?

toomanyplugs — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:49:15 -0800

Is there an easy way to add a Print Setup button to Acrobat 8.0's toolbar that is accessible inside a browser window? Full story inside. I work a lot, but not exclusively, with large engineering drawings in pdf that are usually 11x17 or larger, and for quick reviewing we tend to print them out as 11x17 on the Xerox printer.

We use to be able to accomplish this pretty simply in the Acrobat Print dialog by choosing the printer properties -> paper size = 11x17. Some time ago something changed (printer firmware?) that doesn't do this smoothly anymore. No combination of fit to paper, rotate and center, choose paper source, etc. seems to get the danged thing to print 11x17.

The workaround now is to first use File -> Print Setup and set Paper Size to 11x17, then print as normal. It's an annoying complication, but it works for PDFs that are opened from Windows (not in browsers). The old way still works on other (HP) printers, but those are way slower and farther away.

My problem is that the Print Setup option is not available when viewing a PDF in a Firefox window. I can still print, but unless I can change the paper size in Print Setup, all I'm doing is printing to 8.5x11.

I'd like to at least be able to create a Print Setup button on the toolbar that persists in browser iterations of Acrobat. If anyone has a sneaky way to use AutoHotKey to set the paper size, I'd take that, too. Or if there is a way to get rid of the initial problem altogether, that's even better!

Please note: because of IT policy restrictions, I am forced to keep Acrobat, and CANNOT switch to FoxIt, etc.

Acrobat Pro 8.0
Firefox 3
Xerox WorkCentre5665 driver ver 5.43.9
Windows XP

Virtual scissors and tape: Page assembly?

Myself — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:41:20 -0800

I want software to split, combine, tile, and imposition pages (produced by different apps) before sending the job to the printer. Can I do this without spending megabucks on Acrobat or learning to read and write PostScript by hand? I'm on Windows XP. My current task is producing double-sided quarter-sheet flyers. They should have a Google map on one side, and some text from a word processor on the other. The printer can do 4-up printing and duplexing, but only if the pages are all part of the same print job. So what I want to do is capture the map page on its way to the printer, and capture the text, and combine them into a single document that's (map, map, map, map, text, text, text, text) and then feed that to the printer in 4-up duplex mode.

It would also be nice to do combine multiple pages onto one sheet even on printers that don't support it in their drivers. Ideally, such software would also let me enlarge a vector PDF and tile it across an arbitrary number of letter-sized pages for printing. (Rasterbator only accepts bitmapped images, not PDFs, as input.)

I've tried FinePrint (can't seem to combine print jobs), HP Smart Web Printing (sounds useful but isn't), PF-Merge (requires Acrobat), GreenPrint (can't combine jobs), etc.

I think I could do this by printing everything to PostScript files, manually concatenating the files, and maybe learning a bit of PS glue to make it all work. Is that my best option?

Why won't a PDF's form fields print?

Ikazuchi — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:22:49 -0800

I have a PDF form that I modified from an existing PDF form, adding a new page and a few new fields. The new fields I added are visible on the screen but not visible when I print the form. Other parts of the form work fine, it is only 4 text fields I added. Other checkboxes work and show up fine. I am fairly inexperienced with editing PDFs and using LiveCycle Designer (I have version 7) and can't figure out what the heck I'm missing and I can't extract anything from the help guide.

Pushing the limits of PDFs. First, what are they?

ElfWord — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:39:19 -0800

When it comes to document interactivity, what are PDF files really capable of? Which features are best for creating dynamic displays of information? What are some of the best examples you've seen of interactive PDFs? I'm trying to get a sense of how PDFs, as one of the most standard document formats in the business world, can provide a more dynamic, interactive presentation of a document's contents, rather than just a static "start here, finish here" experience.

Some of the specific things I'd like to know are:
-Is it possible to create an area where more information can be hidden/shown at will, based on reader action? What about user input, so that instead of clicking each time I want to see more information, I check a box at the beginning of the document, or type in a number of extra info pieces I want displayed per area?

-Can the document maker create a PDF that 'calls home' to the web for the latest information? Can the document be saved with the latest info available for offline viewing later? Can this call be based on reader action, or does it have to happen automatically each time the document's opened?

-What about images? Can I let a reader click to see different images in the same space (selecting which scale to see a graph at, for example)?

And, as bolded above, I'd really love to see examples of the best uses of PDF features you know of for document interaction, or dynamic display of information.

Thanks for any insights!

Another Vista workaround, please. How to create PDFs.

FlyByDay — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:32:24 -0800

How can I view AND create PDFs without Acrobat? Acrobat Pro does not play with (delightfully useless piece of junk) Vista, and last week Vista corrupted on my 1-year old computer and had to be reinstalled. I had a version of Acrobat Pro on the computer before, but my computer guy told me in no uncertain terms not to reinstall it. So what other options are there for viewing AND CREATING PDFs sans Acrobat? I need to create PDFs on a near-daily basis.

I searched the archives here but did not find an answer. I know there's got to be one out there, though.

Thanks!

PDF = Pretty Damn Funky

lukemeister — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:25:36 -0800

How can I convert a Word document to a pdf while keeping the margins the same width? We are working on a 5 MB Word document, created with Word 2003 on a PC running Windows XP. The margins must be 1 inch wide. When we convert it to pdf, the right hand margin becomes 1.25 inches wide, and random phrases become boldface. We've tried Acrobat 8 and a freeware converter (dopdf).

Fonts-be-gone (from my PDF)!

heresiarch — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:07:00 -0800

Why are there 20 Mb of embedded fonts in my PDF and how can I make them go away? I've run into a pretty obscure Word/OSX/PDF problem that I'm hoping to get some insight on. I just finished working on a relatively substantial Word document. The Word document itself is around 11 meg, and I've pretty diligently compressed figures to keep the file from getting too large. When I PDF this file (using the PDF button in the standard OS X print dialog box), it comes out around 28 Mb. When I run "Assess Space Usage" on the file using Acrobat Pro 8, it tells me that the vast majority of the file is embedded fonts.

The "Optimize PDF..." tool will show me the embedded fonts, and indeed there are a million of them. I'm using two main fonts (Meta and Hoefler Text) with a bunch of varieties for, e.g., footers, different header levels, figure captions, etc. In the embedded font list I get mostly entries for those two fonts (a standard entry would be "MetaBoldLF-Roman (Subset)", repeated many tens of times), with a handful of entries for fonts I'm not intentionally using but might have somehow snuck in anyway (Times and Arial). Any attempt to use the Optimize PDF tool to remove fonts will crash Acrobat.

I've printed a single page PDF and tried removing fonts from that. It seems to work okay, although I can't really tell if removing fonts causes problems in the output. I suspect since I have the fonts that are embedded, it will display the same for me regardless of whether or not it's embedded. I've also tried using the "Reduce File Size" option. That reliably crashes Acrobat at the very end of the process. This happens to other people I've had try it, too. I've tried using Acrobat Distiller from Word, but pressing the "convert to PDF" button on their toolbar does absolutely nothing. No idea why not.

So, is there any hope for me? My main goal is to get the file size lower without changing the appearance. I feel like there should be some way to remove most of the embedded fonts and just embed each font once and have it work out. Is this wishful thinking? What's causing this proliferation of embedded fonts? Are they each mapped to Word styles, or something?

I'm happy to give a link to the PDF or Word file if you want to play with them yourself, but since they're loaded with personally identifying information I'd rather not publicly link to them. MeMail me for links.

Thanks!

Cloning Vista SP1 OEM? Questions inside...

colecovizion — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:02:24 -0800

Cloning Vista SP1 OEM? Questions inside... I just bought a bunch (30) of computers from Dell. They all came with OEM licenses of Vista/Office 2007/Acrobat 8.1. Everything is activated. As you can imagine, I have quite a CD collection now!

I would like to make a single bootable, pre-configured image (on a USB drive or DVDR) that I can use on these computers just in case I have to reformat them. My ideal configuration would have Vista SP1, Office 2007, and Acrobat 8.1 already installed on the image with any specific configurations and updates. Is this legally possible (the fine print has always confused me)?

If so, my follow-up questions:

1. What software would you recommend to make the image? I'm leaning towards vLite + Acronis TrueImage Home.
2. Between the 30 computers, there are 3 different hardware sets. Would it be best to make an image for each hardware config?
3. How would you go about making such an image so that there aren't any activation issues? I'm perusing this thead for any potential "gotchas." I'm assuming that I would make an image that isn't activated or has any serial numbers in place. The Vista key appears to be modified with ease (Control Panel/System), but maybe there are some repercussions I don't know about. I think I can install Office 2007 and Acrobat 8.1 without entering serials.
4. DVDR or USB? I'm assuming DVDR is faster.

Some notes:

1. I don't need any fancy network deployment software. I would only be doing this when needed
2. I don't need to automate anything unique to the machine such as serial numbers/computer names/passwords. Just eliminating the installation time is good enough for me.

Thanks for any assistance!

Acrobat-profilter: subscript

kjl291 — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:35:34 -0800

I am using adobe acrobat pro 8. I have a basic text field in a simple form. How in the hell do I get a subscript character in there (I want put in the text "H2M DEVELOPMENT CO." with the "2" as subscript)? Is this something boneheadedly simple I am missing? I can do it in two seconds in any word processor...your help will be mos appreciated - thanks in advance!!!

Is there an easy way to share custom Acrobat stamps?

wheat — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:16:00 -0800

Adobe Acrobat Professional (8.0): Is there any way to distribute stamps from one machine to another? How about simply sorting them? I teach online and convert student papers to PDF because I like Acrobat's comments and markup tools (especially the Text Edits, Sticky Note, Stamps, and Underline Text Tool). I have a custom set of stamps that I created to mark common problems in papers I grade.

My problem is twofold: I grade on more than one machine and I would like to make these stamps available to other instructors. But I can't find an easy way to move the entire set of stamps from one machine to another. Acrobat's import feature lets you bring them in one at a time, name them, and assign them to a category, but that's a slow process. I can't even figure out how to sort them so they show up alphabetically by name.

I've sometimes resorted to importing each stamp graphic and naming it manually. But there has to be a better way.

Make links in pdf files open in Firefox?

Wet Spot — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:28:23 -0800

Why do links in pdf documents open in Explorer instead of Firefox? I'm using Acrobat 6.0 to display documents containing links to web pages. Clicking on the links in the Acrobat window opens the corresponding web pages in Explorer instead of Firefox, my default browser. How can I make them open in Firefox, always?

(Dell Latitude D600, XP SP 2)

Acrobat Professional Sux

mjao — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:53:38 -0800

What's with Adobe Acrobat Professional - and not being able to put my custom page / section numbers into the header / footer? Did I miss a meeting? Why has no one else posed this question to the Googles? Is there a 3rd party plug-in that does this? Surely somebody knows something?! ...see how in this screenshot I can do customized page / section numbers

...and yet you can see here that no function exists to insert this information into the footer?! This is madness! Why don't Adobe want people to be able to do this?

...i now refer you back to my initial question; Did I miss a meeting? Is there a plug-in that does this?