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Using Acrobat Reader

For more information about Acrobat Reader, please visit the www.adobe.com Web site.

Acrobat Reader toolbar

This is how the toolbar appears in Acrobat Reader 3.0.

This is an explanation of various toolbar button functions

toolbar.GIF (6810 bytes)

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Opening PDF documents

To open a PDF document, choose File > Open. In the Open File dialog box, highlight the filename, and click Open. Normally, PDF documents have the extension .pdf. In Windows, or on the Macintosh, you can also open a PDF document by double-clicking the file icon.

If double-clicking a file on the Macintosh platform does not open the file in your Acrobat viewer, use File > Open to open the file, close the file, and try again.

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Printing PDF documents

First, select the print options you want by using the File >Print Setup (Windows and UNIX) or Page Setup (Macintosh) command. When you are ready to print, choose File > Print.

Acrobat Exchange offers a Shrink to Fit print option not available with most other applications. Shrink to Fit shrinks (and if necessary rotates) oversized pages to fit on the paper size currently installed in your printer.

PDF files produced by Acrobat Distiller 3.0 can contain custom halftone screens intended for high-resolution imagesetters. When sent to standard desktop PostScript printers, the custom halftone screens contained in the PDF file can produce "muddy" images. To avoid poor image quality on your printout, choose the Use Printer's Halftone Screen option in the Print dialog box.

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Navigating through a document.

Acrobat Reader has a number of tools to let you move through a document.

  1. Moving Around the Current Page: The simplest way to move around the current page is to use the "hand" cursor .  Press the left mouse button and the hand becomes a fist, grabbing the page. With the mouse button held down you can "drag" or "push" the page anywhere on the screen.

    2. The vertical scroll bar on the right of the screen lets you move up or down by line (arrows), by half-page (click in the scroll area), or by user-selected distances (drag the scroll button).

  1. Paging Through a Document: The arrow keys in the tool bar let you move to first, previous, next or last page.

To jump to a specific numbered page, click the page number box in the status bar at the bottom of the main window, type the page number, and click OK.

  1. Browsing With Bookmarks:  You may jump to a topic or subtopic by clicking the Bookmarks and Page button .

    or choose View > Bookmarks and Page to display bookmarks in the overview area. If a triangle appears to the left of the bookmark, click the triangle to show or hide subordinate bookmarks.

    When you click on a bookmark, the document moves to the location in the document defined by the bookmark. You can move directly to any section of the document which has a bookmark.

    If the bookmark window is empty, click on the leftmost button on the tool bar or select "Page Only" from the "View" menu.

  2. Browsing with Thumbnails: A thumbnail is a miniature view of each page in the document that you can display in the overview area.

    To jump to a page by using its thumbnail, click the Thumbnails and Page button thumbn.GIF (382 bytes) or choose View > Thumbnails and Page to display thumbnail images. Click a thumbnail to move to the page it represents. The point you click determines the center of the page display.

  1. Following Links: You can also navigate the page by following the links established by the publishers.   When you position the cursor on any of these links, it will change from its default form to the standard Internet "pointing finger" cursor pfinger.GIF (299 bytes). Click on the link and you will move to the referred section of the document. To return to your original place in the document, click on the double left arrow in the tool bar.

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Adjusting a Page View

You can use the zoom tool, the magnification box in the status bar, or the Actual Size, Fit Page, and Fit Width toolbar buttons to change the screen magnification.

fitpage1.GIF (939 bytes) Actual Size (100% Zoom) Sets the zoom of the page to 100%

fitpage2.GIF (952 bytes) Fit Page In Window Makes the current page fit inside the window.

fitpage3.GIF (952 bytes) Fit Page Width Inside Window   Makes the visible width of the current page fit inside the window.

When you select any of the Fit options, the magnification level resulting from the selection is displayed in the status bar. The Fit options, Fit Page, Fit Width, and Fit Visible are in a sticky state, which means they don’t change as you page through a document unless you change the zoom level.

To increase magnification:  Select the zoom tool zoom.GIF (944 bytes) on the document page to double the current magnification. Or you can click the magnification box in the status bar and choose a magnification level. If you choose Zoom To, type in the magnification level and click OK.

To decrease magnification:  Select the zoom tool zoom.GIF (944 bytes) while holding down the Ctrl (Windows and UNIX) or Option (Macintosh) and click at the center of the area you want to reduce.  Or you can click the magnification box in the status bar and choose a magnification level. If you choose Zoom To, type in the magnification level and click OK.

Note: If viewing a PDF document in a Web browser window, use the zoom out tool zoomout.GIF (941 bytes) to decrease magnification.

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Searching for text.

Use the Find command to find part of a word, a complete word, or multiple words in the active document.

To find a word:

  1. Click the find tool , or choose Tools > Find.
  2. Choose Match Whole Word Only, Match Case, or Find Backwards.

Note: "Find" only works in the currently open PDF file. It will not search across files. Under certain circumstances, "Find" will not work for a document. This is related to how the file was created and cannot be changed. Since the ability to search for text in a graphics file is a primary reason for using PDF for documents, most documents will be searchable.

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Copying and pasting text and graphics to another application

You can select text or a graphic in a PDF document, copy it to the Clipboard, and paste it into a document in another application such as a word processor.  You can also paste text into a PDF document note or into a bookmark.  Once the selected text or graphic is on the Clipboard, you can switch to another application and paste it into another document.

To select text and copy it to the Clipboard:
  1. Do one of the following:
  • Click the text selection tool text.GIF (141 bytes) or choose Tools > Select Text and drag to select the text you want to copy.
  • To select text in one column of a multicolumn story, hold down the Ctrl (Windows and UNIX) or Option key (Macintosh) while dragging to select the text.
  • To select all text on the pages shown in your viewer window—even if only a portion of a page is showing—choose
    Edit > Select All.

Note: The Select All command will not select all the text in the entire document. To copy all the text in the entire document use the Edit > Copy File to Clip-board command. If you do not see the Copy File to Clipboard command, install the OLE plug-in. See the Getting Started guide for information.

When you release the mouse button, the selected text is highlighted. To deselect the text and start over, click anywhere outside the selected text.

  1. Choose Edit > Copy to copy the selected text to the Clipboard. To view the text, choose Window > Show Clipboard.

Note: In Windows 95, the Clipboard Viewer is not installed by default; therefore, you cannot use the Show Clipboard command until you install it. Install the Clipboard Viewer by choosing Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs and clicking the Windows Setup tab. Double-click Accessories, check Clipboard Viewer, and click OK.

To copy graphics to the Clipboard:

1 Choose Tools > Select Graphics. The cursor changes to the cross- hair icon.

2 Drag a rectangle around the graphic to select it. When you release the mouse button, the selected graphic is highlighted. (To deselect the graphic and start over, click anywhere outside the selected graphic.)

3 Choose Edit > Copy to copy the selected graphic to the Clipboard.

To view the graphic, choose Window > Show Clipboard. The graphic is copied in the WMF (Windows), PICT (Macintosh), or XPIXMAP (UNIX) format. With UNIX, the graphic is pasted in the primary selection.

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Reading PDF on the Web

Each document or other resource on the Web is identified by a unique Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address. Clicking a URL link to a PDF document on the Web can open the document identified by the URL in your Web browser for inline viewing, or in an Acrobat viewer if the viewer has been set up as a helper application for your browser.

Reading PDF in a Web browser

A PDF document on the Web can be displayed in a Web browser compatible with Netscape Navigator 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0. Netscape Navigator-compatible browsers also need access to the PDFViewer plug-in in their plug-in folders to display PDF documents. The PDFViewer plug-in is automatically installed in the Netscape plug-ins folder with Windows and on the Macintosh.

For other browsers, with UNIX, or if you install a new browser after installing Exchange or Reader,

Setting up an Acrobat viewer as a helper application

If your Web browser does not support inline viewing of PDF documents or if you prefer not to view PDF inline, you can set up an Acrobat viewer as a helper application with your browser’s preferences. With the viewer set up as a helper, the viewer will launch and display any PDF file linked on the Web.

To set up your browser to recognize PDF files, you must define a MIME type and a file type. File type should be pdf. MIME type should be applica-tion/pdf. See your browser’s documentation or http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/moreinfo for information about configuring specific Webbrowsers.

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