Page up/down exactly one page in Adobe?

June 25, 2006 9:42 AM

Can I get Adobe Reader to page up/down by exactly one page?

I often use Adobe Reader to read image files from books that I have downloaded from EEBO. In these files, the scanned book images take up the middle part of each adobe page; i.e. the top and bottom third of each Adobe page is blank, and the image scanned from the old book appears in the middle.

When reading these documents, I usually adjust the zoom so that the middle part of the Adobe page, with the image on it, fills my screen.

However then when I push "page up" or "page down" I am not taken to the middle of the next page, but I am taken up or down half a page, so that each time I hit "page up" or down, I afterward need to move the sidebar so that the full image I want to view is visible on the screen.

If I could page up/down *exactly* one page (from the middle of page 1 to the middle of page 2), I could navigate documents much more easily. It would make quite a difference when reading long documents as pdf's. Is there a command or a macro or any way to accomplish this?

posted by washburn to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I don't believe there's any way to do this. If you are zoomed in to a section of a page, you can jump to the next or previous pages by either hitting CTRL+PgDn/PgUp or the left and right arrow keys. However, it will only put you at the top of the next page. This behavior is consistent regardless of page view/magnification.
posted by camcgee at 10:23 AM on June 25, 2006

I don't think there's any way to manipulate the paging like that. What you need is the crop tool. I'm guessing Reader doesn't have that capability. The Standard and Professional versions of Acrobat do, I know. So if you're willing to A.) shell out $300, B.) acquire it by less honorable means, or C.) know a buddy who has Standard or Professional, you could crop all your pages down to the outlines of just the book content, then zoom to "fit screen" and then any time you page down, you wouldn't need to adjust.
posted by kookoobirdz at 11:14 AM on June 25, 2006

Do you have a Mac? I don't know if this works on PCs, but I can navigate exactly down a page (from the middle of page 1 to the middle of page 2) just by hitting the space bar. Just position the first page to where you want it, hit the space bar, and you'll be taken exactly a page down.
posted by hazelshade at 11:34 AM on June 25, 2006

Also look in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen in Reader and make sure the "Single Page" icon is clicked. If it's on "Continuous", it won't display a "clean break" when you Page Up/Down, but instead show half-pages, etc.
posted by robbie01 at 12:39 PM on June 25, 2006

Use F8 to remove the toolbars at the top. Select a zoom view of about 80-90%, the smallest you can be comfortable with.

Use the right arrow to move to the next page. You will always start at the top, but then the down arrow will move the page down a little if needed to get you where you want to be.
posted by megatherium at 3:37 PM on June 25, 2006

(Reverse the order of the two steps mentioned in the first paragraph.)
posted by megatherium at 3:46 PM on June 25, 2006

Response by poster: Hmm. Thanks for the advice. I don't have a Mac, I'm afraid, and my library of pdf's is too large to crop; however Megatherium's suggestion does offer a partial solution to my problem.

Googling on this subject, I also came up with the Foxit pdf reader, which also doesn't do what I want, but which seems to be a nice lightweight pdf reader.

Perhaps I should install the latest version of Acrobat's PDF reader, to see if it works like the Mac version decribed by hazelshade?

Anyway, thanks again everyone.
posted by washburn at 12:28 AM on June 26, 2006

Best answer: Well, in case anyone reads this at some future date, I found and alternative pdf reader called GSview that does exactly what I want. Hooray!
posted by washburn at 10:13 AM on June 28, 2006