Adobe Acrobat 7 TIPS and TRICKS THE 100150 BEST [Electronic resources]

Donna L. Baker; Kristin Kalning; Becky Morgan; Judy Ziajka

نسخه متنی -صفحه : 203/ 139

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TIP 120: Starting a Review Process

In Acrobat 5 you could share comments with others and then incorporate all the comments into the original PDF document. Acrobat 6 made the process simpler, managing it through wizards and prompts. Now in Acrobat 7, you work with a separate Review window to control and manage your reviews. If you initiate the review process using Acrobat 7 Professional, you can enable the documents to be used by recipients working with Adobe Reader 7 as well. When you do this, some functions are restricted in Acrobat 7, such as inserting and deleting pages or editing content, signing the document, and filling in form fields.

Keep Your Sources Safe

It's a good idea to save a copy of the document prior to incorporating reviewers' comments. Edit the document using the copy to preserve the layout and structure. This way, imported comments are in the correct locations on the document. Acrobat reminds you about document versions. If you open a copy of a document that is part of an active review, a message window appears asking if you want to open the copy or incorporate any returned comments. A handy feature!

The process involves several stepsthe review is initiated and copies are sent to those you want to include in the process; the recipients add their comments and return them to you, at which time you integrate them into the original document and process them.

Let's say you have a document that you want to share with a colleague for commenting. Follow these steps to set up an email review from within Acrobat:

Choose Comments > Send for Review > Send by Email for Review to open the Send by Email for Review dialog, or click the Send for Review task button's pull-down arrow (on either the program's or the Organizer's toolbar) and choose Send by Email for Review from the menu (Figure 120a). Alternatively, in any program containing a PDFMaker, you can choose Adobe PDF > Convert to Adobe PDF and Send for Review or click the button on the PDFMaker's toolbar .

Figure 120a. Choose a command from the task button's menu or the program menu.

The Send by Email for Review wizard opens. There are three steps in the wizard. Here's what you do in each pane:

Click the pull-down arrow on the Step 1 pane and choose an open document, or click Browse and locate the document you want to send. Click Next.
On the Step 2 pane, click Address Book to open your Outlook address book and select email addresses (if Outlook is your email program), or click the Address list and type addresses. You can customize the review options as wellsee the sidebar "Customizing the Review Options" in this tip. Click Next.

On the Step 3 pane, preview the contents of the invitation (Figure 120b). Then click Send Invitation.

Figure 120b. Follow the instructions in the wizard's dialog to set up the review.

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When the Mail Doesn't Work

The Send by Email for Review dialog uses a specific filter on the email name you enter. If your email address doesn't use a three-letter suffixfor example, com, net, and so onyou may receive an error. Instead, in the Identity panel of the Preferences dialog box, type your email address in the email address field, and then click OK.

An Outgoing Message Notification information dialog opens, explaining what happens next. Depending on your security settings, the email may be sent automatically, or you may need to move through dialogs approving the mail process. Click OK to dismiss the dialog.

Customizing the Review Options

When you are setting up an email review, you can customize the options available for your reviewers. On the second pane of the Send by Email for Review wizard, click Customize Review Options to open the Review Options dialog. You can:

Specify that the comments are sent to an email address other than yours.
Display Drawing Markup tools for your reviewers to use.
Allow reviewers using Adobe Reader 7 to participate.

You can also choose Comments > Enable for Tracking in Adobe Reader from the program menu to allow Adobe Reader 7 users to comment on a document; to include the feature automatically, you must resave the document.

That's it for the first part. You've added comments to a document, assigned a recipient, and emailed it. Next it lands in the recipient's email inbox. Here's what the recipient needs to do:

Open the email message (Figure 120c). Read the instructions. You can see that the PDF document is attached to the email.

Figure 120c. The instructions are emailed to the recipient and the document is shown as an attachment.

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Double-click the email attachment to open it in Acrobat or Adobe Reader.

Make comments and review the comments sent from the initiator. Figure 120d shows the sample document as it appears in Adobe Reader 7. You see the How To pane displayed at the right of the window; it shows information on how to participate in an email review. A Document Message Bar appears above the document showing basic instructions. I chose the Drawing Markups option as I constructed the review, and therefore the toolbar appears in the Adobe Reader 7 window.

Figure 120d. If you specify the option in the Send for Review wizard, your recipients working in Adobe Reader 7 can participate in the review.

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When you have finished, choose File > Send Comments or click Send Comments on the Commenting toolbar. A dialog opens explaining that the comments are being sent back to the initiator, and shows the email address specified by the originator of the review. You can type a different email address or choose one from the Outlook Address Book, just as you can when designing the review.

Once the comments return to you (the initiator), they are integrated into the PDF as soon as you double-click the email attachment to open the document in Acrobat. If you open a document that is being tracked, a message window appears asking if you want to open the copy or incorporate returned comments (Figure 120e). You can then review the contents of the Comments list and finish the document's processing.

Figure 120e. Acrobat prompts you to integrate a received document containing additional comments into the original document being circulated for review.