Carleton College: Information Technology Services: Using Adobe Acrobat

Using Adobe Acrobat

Why use Acrobat?

If you're distributing documents to your students you'll want to consider using Acrobat. It's most effective when you've created documents that have extensive formatting you want to retain and where the ability to print out a good copy is important.

You might find Acrobat useful if any of these situations sound familiar:

"I have an answer key for this exam in Word -- I can print it out for everyone, but only a few people will actually look at it. I'll just post a copy on the door of my office and people can copy the answers out by hand if they want them."

"I used this complex diagram as an overhead in class, and four students asked for a copy of it. I'll make photocopies and send them over in campus mail."

"I'd like to put a copy of my syllabus on the course web page, but I can't get the formatting correct without retyping the whole thing."

"A student lost his syllabus and emailed me Friday night to ask for another copy--he'll just have to wait until class on Monday."

How do my class and I use it?

In a typical scenario you create a document for your course using your word processing program of choice. When the document is finished you invoke your local copy of Acrobat (the purchase and installation of which you'll need to arrange before-hand with your computing coordinator). Generally, this is no more difficult than printing or saving the file. The result is a PDF file which when viewed or printed with Acrobat Reader looks exactly like the final printed version from your word processor.

You can deliver this document to your students through any convenient means. Often the best solution is to add the file to your existing course web site folder and place a link to it from an existing page. Students would visit the web page, click on the new link and be able to view and print the document. Or you can deliver the PDF file directly to the students through a Fabio course folder or an email attachment. Students can then open the file using a local copy of the free Reader.

What are the advantages of Acrobat?

Anything that can be printed can be made into a PDF file. If you have an existing document and a copy of the Acrobat program, the work required to make a PDF file is minimal.

Once it's in PDF format, anyone with the free Reader program can view and print it. All lab computers and many student owned computers already have Acrobat Reader installed. If you can create it, they will be able to read it in electronic form.

PDF files are also particularly good at retaining the exact formatting (including fonts) of the original document, so you can be sure that no matter what sort of computer students are working from they'll see what you meant them to see.

You can create your files in whatever program you like (no matter how exotic) and not have to worry about arranging student access (in labs or dorms or wherever) to the particular program.

What are the disadvantages of Acrobat?

Students may not have a copy of Acrobat Reader on computers in their rooms. Although the Reader is free, downloading and installing it may be a deterrent to a few students.

A PDF file will be larger than the same information contained on a normal web page. Students who own older computers or connect from off campus may be frustrated by the download time.

After they are created, PDF documents are not easy to modify. If you want students to be able to work with the text you provide, your computing coordinator can help you find a better option.

For More Information

In order to make PDF files you'll need a copy of the full Acrobat program (not just the free Reader). Your computing coordinator can help you with this and get you started creating PDF files.

Some terminology

Portable document format (PDF) is computer file format specifically designed to allow a given file to be viewed or printed from any computer and retain the same appearance. PDF files can contain text, graphics and complex layouts. If it can be printed on paper it can almost certainly be represented with a PDF file. PDF files are often called "Acrobat" files because of the tools they are associated with.

Adobe Acrobat is a commercial tool for manipulating PDF files. Acrobat comes bundled with several other tools (notably Adobe Distiller) which allow you to create PDF files from existing documents in other formats.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a widely distributed, free program for viewing PDF files. It's often used within a web browser where it allows PDF files directly linked from web pages to be viewed just like a normal web page.

Downloading Acrobat

The free Acrobat Reader can be can be downloaded from the Adobe web site. Check to make sure you don't already have a copy, though! Here's the link: Download Acrobat

Three Steps to a PDF File

To give you a sense of how easy it is to create a PDF, here are the steps you would use. You'll want to work with your coordinator to get the software and set it up before trying this yourself.

1. Create a document in the program of your choice. Microsoft Word is a common example but any program you can print from will work.

2. Print the document to PDF form rather than your normal printer. The exact steps vary depending on what version of Acrobat you're using. If you're working under Windows, choose File�Print (as usual). Then choose "Acrobat Distiller" from the list of printers. If you're working on a Mac, go to the Chooser (under the Apple menu in the upper left) and select "PDF Writer". Then choose File�Print. These options will only be available if the full version of Acrobat is installed on your computer.

3. Once you click OK you'll be prompted for a new file name (it should end in .pdf) and saving location. Acrobat will take a few moments and create the new PDF file.

Before printing you may want to set the PDF preferences to something other than the default. Although there are many options available the two most important are the embedding of fonts and the level of Acrobat compatibility. In general you should choose to embed all fonts, as this will guarantee a consistent appearance. You should also set the PDF file to be Acrobat 3.0 compatible unless you need some feature particular to a newer version of Acrobat. These setting can be found under the Page Setup option once you've set your computer to "print" to PDF format.