Adobe Acrobat Tips

ColdZone has chosen Acrobat as the most efficient way of storing and distributing documents electronically. Acrobat uses a file format called PDF (portable document format), and all Acrobat files are recognized by the .PDF extension. The same files run on Macintosh, Windows, and Unix. Due to the wide support for this format and the ready availability of free readers, Acrobat PDF files are becoming a standard across the web.

This icon is a registered trademark of Adobe and is generally used to identify a document written in Acrobat PDF format. PDF files have been around for a while and as with all things computer, have been improved over the years. As a result, the reader you use to view or print these files may require updating. If you have problems reading one of our PDF files, be sure you have downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader version 3 or higher. To download the latest free version click on "Get Acrobat Reader":

The Acrobat Browser Plug-In is included with Acrobat version 3 and is automatically loaded into either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer when Acrobat is installed. This allows any PDF file to be viewed within the browser window while online. See the README.TXT included with your Acrobat installer program for details on plug-ins.

You can save a document that is visible within the browser for offline reading. The saving procedure varies among internet browsers:
In Netscape Navigator, select File > Save As...
In Internet Explorer, select File > Save As... and choose Source as the type.

To print a PDF document that is visible within the browser, better results are obtained by saving the PDF file to your local hard drive (following the saving procedure above) then printing from there. Printing results will vary depending on the type of printer you are using. Certain non-postscript printers can get memory overruns when being sent a file with a lot of the vector line art graphics. The solution is to go to Page or Print Setup, select the printer driver, go to Graphics Mode, and select Raster Graphics, (not vector graphics). If you are getting blurry graphics printing to a PCL printer from Windows, try installing the 3.01RA update from Adobe.

Following is a quick course for viewing PDF files using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please see Help in the Adobe Acrobat Reader menu itself for more details and other functions.

• The hand button allows you to grab the page and move it up or down while in zoom view.
  
  
• The magnify button lets you zoom. The Windows Control key or the Macintosh Option key changes the zoom in to a zoom out.
  
  
• The text button lets you copy and paste text into other documents. To select normal text to copy, use the 'abc' Text button, and click-drag to highlight the text. Selecting column text to copy is a little trickier. Hold down the Control key while dragging across one column in Windows, or use the Option key in Mac. With the text column highlighted, select Edit > Copy or control-C, open Word, and select Edit > Paste or control-V. Repeat on the next column.
  
  
• Within any single PDF, use the page forward > and backward < buttons to move forward one page (1 2 3 4 ) and backward one page (4 3 2 1). The first page |< button jumps you to the very first page of a document, and the last page >| button jumps to the last page.
  
  
• The previous view << and next view >> buttons are just like the same buttons on your web browser. These remember the previous pages or documents you have hyperlinked around to within PDF documents that use indexes or hyperlinks. The difference is the page forward < and backward > buttons go with the order of sequential pages, and the previous and next view buttons go with the order of visited hyperlinks.
  
  
• The page layout buttons let you zoom in or out quickly. The first page button is at 100% zoom. When you are at any of our 8 1/2 x 11 documents, the full page (center) button lets you see the whole page, but you might not be able to read it. Use the page width button to get it readable on the screen, then use the scroll bar or hand tool to move up or down the page.
  
  
• The Find button with the binoculars is a simple word search that looks for a word in the current document. You may have Acrobat Reader with Search installed, in which case a second binocular and page button exists, which searches a collection of documents with a central index.