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Adobe® Acrobat® Frequently Asked Questions - acroFAQ
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| Q. How To Turn off Adverts in Adobe Reader |
| A. Preferences>Startup>Show Messages and Automatically Update, turn this setting off. |
| Category: general |
Applies To: |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb 04 |
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| Q. Can I convert a PDF document to HTML? |
| A. Acrobat version 6 has fairly good export to HTML. However there are some features which once converted or created in HTML can't be converted to HTML (like Bookmarks, Form Fields etc) also there are a lot of third party tools available from PDFStore that will do a much better job at conversion than Acrobat.
If you want to use Acrobat for conversion to and from PDF then you might want to consider adding the supporting structure to the document when it's created. |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. How do I convert EPS to PDF? |
| A. Acrobat 6 and 5 can both open and convert EPS files directly, using Acrobat 6 simply choose File>Create PDF>From Files... The alternative is to drag and drop the EPS file into Acrobat Distiller, although the results aren't as pretty |
| Category: general |
Applies To: |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb 04 |
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| Q. How can I print a PDF from my VB/C#/VB.NET/Delphi Program? |
A. Check out the list of developer libraries that are available from the PDF Web Links section. Some of the companies include:
- iSEDQuick (SEDTech)
- PDF4NET
- Glyph and COG
- ceTe Software
- activePDF |
| Category: developers |
Applies To: All |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. Is it possible to use a File Based DSN with Acrobat's ADBC? |
A. If you do a listing from AcroJS of all of the available DSN's the only ones listed are the System and User DSNs - this is because they are stored in the registry and are retrieved by ODBC automatically.
I tried 'filedsn:' and other combinations until I got this to work:
ADBC.newConnection("filedsn=D:\path\to\your\file\dsn\acrotips.dsn");
Incidently, it appears that you can't have a System DSN or User DSN called 'filedsn' if you do it will choose the File DSN Dialog and not the user/syste, DSN you created. |
| Category: developers |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. What's this disclosed thing all about? |
A. Introduced in version 5.05 was the extra security precaution for users that prevented PDF documents from being accessed programmatically via javascript without the document first having it's 'disclosed' property set to true.
This security feature doesnt apply to Javascript code that is being executed from the console, through a batch sequence or executed from a menu item.
PlanetPDF have some great articles:
- Disclosed Property Article (Chris Dahl, Arts)
- DP Story's Article on Batch Processing
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| Category: developers |
Applies To: 5.05,6 |
Entered By: DW, NL |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. What are templates? |
| A. Templates are PDF pages (or elements from a PDF page) that have been marked as a Template.
Once you have marked a page as a template you can later 'spawn' that page (or the elements from the template) as either a new page or onto an existing page.
John Deuberts Book 'Extending Acrobat Forms with Javascript' has an
excellent section on Templates.
We have have also created an article that shows how to create and implement a Template(s) |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 4,5,6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. What is OCG? |
| A. Optional Content Groups were introduced with PDF version 1.5 (Acrobat 6) to provide
'layers' in PDF files.
You will need an authoring package that can create these layers:
- Adobe Illustrator CS, InDesign CS
- PDFMaker Macro for AutoCAD and Visio
ArtsPDF Stratify can
also create layers from existing PDFs!
Check the articles section on AcroTips for an article explaining
OCG's with a working example. |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. How do I set the tab order form fields? |
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| Q. Why do my inter-document links always go to the first page in the PDF and not to page I want them to go to? |
| A. It was a bug in Acrobat, this was fixed in Acrobat 6.0.1
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| Category: general |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. What about PopUp Menus - how do I create them? |
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| Q. Can I open a PDF document to a specific page? |
| A. This comes up a lot, and the answer is yes and no. If you are viewing the PDF inside a Web Browser and the PDF is being served up by a Web Server then the answer is yes. In every other case the answer is no.
You can find all of the parameters that can be specified here.
Apparently there's a command line switch for Acrobat that can also
accomplish the same thing. |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 4,5,6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. Where's the specification for creating a Highlighting File for PDF? |
| A. Here of course ;) |
| Category: developer |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. What's SOAP? |
| A. Simple Object Access Protocol is a W3C standard providing a way for two computer programs to communicate and exchange data.
We've written an article explaining what SOAP is and how Acrobat
6 utilises it. Take a look in our articles section. |
| Category: developer |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: Dave |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. How do I switch to Full Screen mode inside the Browser? |
A. Using Adobe Reader version 6 you can switch using the keyboard keystroke: CMD+L on the Mac and CTRL+L on the PC.
To exit Full Screen mode simply press the ESC key. |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb 04 |
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| Q. What's pdf.ocx? |
A. pdf.ocx is an unsupported ActiveX Control that Adobe Reader (and previous versions) use to provide PDF Viewing support for Web Browsers
It's possible to make use of the interface exposed by this ActiveX however this control is not supported and not documented and subject to change.
I would also caution potential developers that there will be certain circumstances where usage will not be allowed. |
| Category: developer |
Applies To: 4,5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. How do I show/hide fields? |
A. There are quite a few ways to accomplish this:
1. Select the Visibility option in the Properties dialog for the form field(s).
2. Programmatically using Javascript and the display.[visible|noPrint|noView|hidden] properties: this.getField("myfield").display = display.hidden;
3. Use the Show/Hide Field Action in the Action Tab in the Properties Dialog (triggered by any event you like. |
| Category: forms |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. Can I have form fields in Layers? |
A. The short answer is no. Any object on the page can have an Optional Content Group (OCG) assigned to it, providing a way to create Layers, however Form XObjects have no way to add an OCG attribute and therefore live on top of the page objects outside of the control of any Optional Content Group.
Perhaps one option that might solve this problem is the upcoming ArtsPDF Stratify (http://www.artspdf.com/arts_pdf_stratify.asp). This tool let's you move PDF Objects to new or existing layers from right within Acrobat (it's a plugin). Contact ArtsPDF for the lowdown.
Another potential option is to make use of some Javascript and the display object. The display object has four properties for controlling the display of fields:
- visible
- printable
- hidden
- non-printable
getField("fieldA").display = display.hidden; |
| Category: forms |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: DW,NL |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. Where can I find more about the format used for Highlight Text in Searches? |
A. There's actually a spec for it, available from Adobe's Partner Site (it's hard to find):
Highlight Specification |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 4,5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Feb '04 |
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| Q. How do I create Toolbar Icons using Javascript? |
A. It turns out that the objects in Javascript that are provided in the toolkit aren't enough easily usable when it comes time to create Icons for the toolbars.
The solution is to use a commercial tool such as WindJack's PDFCanOpener
WindJack |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar |
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| Q. How do I search using Javascript, but only the current Document? |
A. In Acrobat version 6 there's an expanded Search Object.
Using this object we can perform a search from an actionable object (link, button etc) like this:
search.query("searchterm","ActiveDoc");
To search against an Acrobat index refer to the section on the Index object in the Acrobat Javascript Documentation. |
| Category: developers |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar |
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| Q. How can I get the 'printContents' object to work properly? |
A. The 'printContents' object exists inside the new printParams object in Acrobat 6, it provides programmatic control over printer features such as whether comments or forms are printed.
The problem is that the documentation has a little type which throws the example into a little dizzy. The docs read:
var pp = this.getPrintParams();
pp.interactive = pp.constants.interactionLevel.silent;
pp.printContent = pp.constants.printContent.formFieldsOnly;
this.print(pp);
--- and they should read ---
var pp = this.getPrintParams();
pp.interactive = pp.constants.interactionLevel.silent;
pp.printContents = pp.constants.printContents.formFieldsOnly;
this.print(pp);
Note the 'printContents' (s) and not as stated in the example 'printContent'. |
| Category: developers |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar '04 |
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| Q. What the heck is SOAP? |
A. Simple Object Access Protocol is a messenging system between two web systems.
Acrobat 6 now supports SOAP allowing you to interact with live Web Services and more!
Check out our article on SOAP in the articles section.
AcroTips Articles |
| Category: developers |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar '04 |
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| Q. How can make a quick copy of form fields? |
A. Using either the form selection tool or the individual form tools you can CONTROL Key + CLICK + DRAG of the mouse to create a copy of any form field(s).
If you hold down the SHIFT key will dragging (CTRL+SHIFT+CLICK+DRAG) the copy will be constrained in movement/position either horizontally or vertically. |
| Category: forms |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar '04 |
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| Q. How come if I enter text in one form field it appears automatically in copied fields on other pages? |
A. The reason for this is simple. Any form fields that share the same name will also share the same data.
If you enter a value in one field and go to another field that entered data will be replicated into all the other form fields in the PDF that have the same name. To fix this behaviour simply rename the form fields. |
| Category: forms |
Applies To: 6 |
Entered By: DW |
Date Entered: Mar '04 |
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| Q. What are named destinations and how do I create them? |
A. Named Destinations are 'earmarked' locations in a PDF document. Each destination can remember the page it lives on, the zoom that was set at the time of creation and also the location on the page that was being viewed when the destination was set.
Named Destinations can be accessed by links, bookmarks, specially formed URLs in Web Pages and also any PDF object that can have an 'Action' assigned to it.
To create a named destination simple display the 'Named Destinations' tab from the Window Menu (5) and from the Pages sub menu in the View menu (6).
After a destination is created, you can write a little javascript to access them:
this.gotoNamedDest("HomePage"); |
| Category: general |
Applies To: 5,6 |
Entered By: DW, NL |
Date Entered: Mar '04 |
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