Since the AUC’s inception in 2006, the Community has been supported by a group of outstanding Acrobat experts always willing to share their expertise with Acrobat users around the world. We want to thank them especially for making the AUC such a vibrant, engaging place to be.

And here’s more icing to the cake – the AUC has kicked off a week-long contest to celebrate the big “5” with you. If you tweet a tip linked to any forms-related content on AcrobatUsers.com via Twitter, using the hashtag #formstips in your tweet, you can win one of several six-month subscriptions to Adobe SendNow Plus or Adobe FormsCentral. The AUC will randomly select one winner from each day’s tweets. More details and sample tweet tips here.

If you’re on the outside looking in, we’d love for you to join the AUC. You can be one of the almost 1,000 people joining the Community every month who enjoy special benefits like discounts, access to eSeminars and of course expert answers to your Acrobat-related questions. Whether you’re a seasoned AUC veteran or new to the Community, we hope you’ll be a part of the next five years and beyond!

Don’t miss hearing more about deploying Acrobat X with Joel Geraci, Acrobat Technical Evangelist in his Tech Talk session with Chris French, Senior Product Manager for Acrobat Solutions, Tuesday, February 22, 10 a.m. PST. Sign up here.

Joel Geraci has been an Acrobat Technical Evangelist at Adobe Systems for over 13 years and has 25 years experience in desktop design and publishing. He is the author of two Acrobat blogs: The PDF Developer Junkie and IT Matters.

Chris French is a Senior Product Manager who’s worked on Acrobat and Reader versions 9 and X since joining Adobe in 2007.  For Acrobat X, he managed the redesign of the new user interface, production and of the new Acrobat X Suite, and IT deployment improvements. 

For additional upcoming Acrobat eSeminars and session recordings, visit Acrobat Users.com.

Earlier this week, with the release of our 10.0.1 update, we included the download locations for our first SCUP catalogs.  You can find them in the release notes.  We’ll also be including them in release notes for updates going forward.

There are separate SCUP catalogs for Acrobat X and Reader X.  You can download from the following URLs:

http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Acrobat10_Catalog.cab

http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Reader10_Catalog.cab

You’ll find instructions for deploying updates using SCUP and SCCM in our Enterprise Administration Guide which is available on our Enterprise Administration page.  

Still hungry for more on SCUP and Acrobat and Reader X for IT? Joel and I will be talking about SCUP and other deployment improvements for Acrobat and Reader X in a free Tech Talk on February 22.  Join us.

 Chris French, Senior Product Manager, Acrobat Solutions

One of the key pieces of this elevated risk-management strategy is a concept called ‘sandboxing’  – introduced in Adobe Reader X in November. Highly respected by security professionals, sandboxing is a method of creating a confined execution environment for running programs with low rights or privileges. Sandboxes protect users’ systems from being harmed by untrusted documents that contain executable code. In the context of Adobe Reader, the untrusted content is any PDF file and the processes it invokes. Adobe Reader X treats all PDF documents as potentially corrupt and confines all processing to the sandbox.

Specifically, to protect you and your organization from malicious code that attempts to use PDF files to write to a computer’s file system, Adobe provides an implementation of sandboxing technology called Protected Mode. Enabled by default whenever you launch Adobe Reader X, Protected Mode helps prevent attackers from installing malware on a user’s system, thereby reducing the risk of potential security threats. Protected Mode limits the level of access granted to the program, safeguarding systems running the Windows operating system from malicious PDF files that might attempt to write to the computer’s file system, delete files, or otherwise modify system information.

Check out this new white paper that dives deep into sandboxing and other security features, and how the Acrobat X family of products takes the security of PDF documents and data to a new level.

Steve Gottwals, Group Product Manager, Adobe Reader

For instance, Barkley Court Reporters, the largest independently owned court reporting firm in the U.S. and abroad, since its start, has been a driving force for innovation both internally and externally for its clients. By embracing Acrobat software, Barkley has transformed the quality and interactivity of deposition transcripts, scanned exhibits, and other case materials delivered to clients, which include some of the largest law firms in the U.S.

The company uses Acrobat software to replace inefficient paper-based legal process and uses easy-to-navigate PDF Portfolios to give legal teams rapid access to vital case documents for internal review and presentation. Mason Farmani, COO and Managing Partner, Barkley Court Reporters, says, “We are impressed by the new design and overall enhancements to PDF Portfolio capabilities. The ability to easily apply new layouts and colors and select visual themes can help legal teams to create presentations that standout and better communicate case details.” 

“Acrobat X enables our in-house council to quickly assemble a variety of documents into a PDF Portfolio, delivering an unparalleled platform for collaboration and information sharing,” Farmani adds.

Lawyers at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, one of Delaware’s largest firms, understand how important collaboration is in winning cases. PDF Portfolios play a key role here. “Creating PDF Portfolios in Adobe Acrobat X is fantastic. The software’s interface is clean and engaging, and we can combine all important case documents—from deposition transcripts and discovery notes to research and presentation of evidence—into a single, convenient file ready for courtroom presentation,” says Molly DiBianca, associate attorney.

Bureau Veritas (BV) is a leading global engineering consulting firm that helps clients worldwide adhere to quality, environmental, construction, and health and safety standards. With 900 global offices and more than 400,000 workers that deliver a comprehensive range of services including inspection, testing, auditing, certification, training, and more, sharing information and collaborating smoothly and effectively are critical to successful projects and a positive bottom line. “The PDF Portfolios help us take collaboration to the next level. Consolidating and presenting all kinds of content—from presentations to design drawings and even videos—in a single file will streamline collaborating  with employees and partners, and help to ensure we complete projects on time and under budget,” says Kyle Froling, senior IS support associate.

It’s easy to see how PDF Portfolios benefit businesses like BV or law firms like Young Conaway. But forward-looking educators have embraced the technology, as well. Lincoln Public Schools (LPS), Lincoln, Nebraska, has been recognized by SchoolMatch, an independent ranking service, as one of the most successful school districts in the nation.

At LPS, students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and staff use PDF Portfolios for a number of activities. “PDF Portfolios created with Adobe Acrobat X will benefit students for showcasing work, parents for increased communication about student progress, teachers for online review and grading of student work, counselors for career guidance, and administrators and support staff for communication and planning,” according to Linda Dickeson, Adobe Education Leader & Distance Learning Coordinator at Lincoln Public Schools. LPS plans to use PDF Portfolios to support a more collaborative approach to communication and planning among teachers, career guidance counselors, administrators and support staff PDF, as well.

Advanced redaction and commenting tools in Acrobat X add to its extensive collaboration capabilities. At Young Conaway, for example, legal teams can easily review everyone’s comments in a single file and add their feedback, helping to get everyone on the same page. “If documents contain sensitive client information, then we can quickly and reliably redact details—knowing that we can easily bring back the content for our own files when needed,” adds Young Conaway’s DiBianca.

Consultants at Datastream Connexion, an IT consulting firm serving clients of all sizes, from small, independent firms to large-scale government projects rely on several Acrobat X capabilities: from digital forms and signatures, commenting and markup to PDF Portfolios.  Recently, Datastream Connexion provided support for FoodSHIELD, a grant-funded web-based system for communication, coordination, education, and training among the nation’s food and agriculture sectors. This secure system allows public health and food regulatory officials at the local, state, and federal levels across the U.S. to work together. It also helps communicate food safety information among other government agencies, the private sector, and the public. “The ability to create dynamic, fillable forms in Acrobat X will be essential to the FoodSHIELD program. Many ports in the world that handle food products use PDF forms to process and certify items before entering the system. Acrobat X makes it easier to standardize forms and accelerate processing with digital signatures,” says Eric Hoffman, managing partner, Datastream Connexion.

Hoffman continues: “Using Acrobat X to create PDF Portfolios ushers in a new way of communicating and collaborating with our partners. Instead of exchanging static Microsoft Word documents or sending large emails, we can compile an array of interactive, rich files—drawings, presentations, and videos—into a single, compact file. It enables us to communicate information more effectively and efficiently.”

And that’s how we see it too: communicate information more effectively and efficiently. If you have a story about Acrobat and how it helps you communicate more effectively and efficiently, please send it my way, mgrilli@adobe.com. We’ll love to share it with the Acrobat community.

Mark Grilli, Director of Product Marketing, Acrobat Solutions

Thanks to the team’s efforts, Acrobat X has garnered a number of accolades in its infancy including the PCMag.com Editors’ Choice and Best Products of 2010 Awards. Top publications such as About.com (5 out of 5 rating) , NotebookReview.com (4 out of 5) and PCMag.com (4.5 out of 5) have praised Acrobat X’s new and enhanced features. It’s certainly a testament to everyone’s hard work.

That said, while we’ll have some exciting news to share with you throughout 2011, we wanted to spend a moment in this young year to recognize the sheer magnitude of talent that went into developing Acrobat X—by-the-numbers. From the lines of code to the number of hours put into Acrobat X, here’s to each and every one for their blood, sweat and tears that made Acrobat X happen!

A few of our favorite highlights, by the numbers:

• Number of Adobe employees that worked on Acrobat X: 950
• Number of hours the team worked on Acrobat X: 5 million
• Number of working days spent on the product: Approximately 625
• Number of customers visited: 1,200 in 20+ countries
• Number of pre-release beta testers: 3,100 participants
• Number of pre-release forum posts: Close to 6,000
• Number of customer bugs fixed (pre-release): Over 250
• Number of languages shipped: 30 languages
• Gallons of coffee, pounds of chocolate, orders of take-out and bags of tootsie rolls consumed: To be determined, but like most of you with new year’s resolutions we’re hitting the gym, trails, surf and slopes!

And this doesn’t even take into account the exceptional contractors, vendors and partners who continue to offer their creativity and domain expertise. We raise our glass with a toast of thanks – and to the exciting prospect of offerings to come in 2011.

Stephanie Baartz-Bowman, Principal Product Marketing Manager, Acrobat

Exporting An Entire PDF

If you want to save all the contents of a PDF file to an editable Microsoft Word file, you just have to go to “File -> Save As -> Microsoft Word -> Word Document.” This will export the entire PDF to a .docx file. Using Acrobat X, you can be assured of a high quality export that retains document formatting, paragraphs, tables, images, etc. as they are present in the original PDF. You can also use this feature to save PDF of a scanned document as MS Word file.

At the same time, if your PDF file has tables and you want to save the document as MS Excel file, you can use “File -> Save As -> Spreadsheet -> Microsoft Excel Workbook” to export the entire PDF to a .xlsx file.

 Exporting Selected Content

However, if you only want to extract and re-use some specific content (including text and images) and not the entire PDF file, we have added a cool feature in Acrobat X to help you do just that. In order to copy specific content, take the cursor to a blank area, press the left key of your mouse and then use the mouse cursor to select the area which you want to copy. Once the required area is selected, open the context menu and chose the “Copy with Formatting” option to copy the selected content to the clipboard and then paste it to Word, Excel etc.  You can also choose the “Export Selection As” option and then in the resulting window, you can type the name and chose the format of the file (for example .docx, .xlsx, .rtf etc.) in which you want the selected contents saved. It is as simple as that!

As you can see, the new capabilities in Acrobat X now make it very easy for you to use contents of a PDF file in another document. We encourage you to try these out and see the results for yourselves and share your impressions in the comment section of this blog, or via @Acrobat on Twitter.

Anuj Gupta, Product Manager, Acrobat Solutions Group

Adobe Acrobat X Classroom in a Book is a guide for all levels of Acrobat users, whether you’re a newbie or want to dive deeper into product functionality. The book logically opens with an introduction to Adobe Acrobat X and creating PDF files and then covers more advanced tasks like combining content in PDF Portfolios and using Acrobat for PDF-based document reviews. Each chapter is a step-by-step, project-based guide with questions at the end of each lesson. Other topics covered include working with forms, adding security to documents, using Acrobat with Microsoft Office files, and making scanned text editable and searchable.

 To get you started, we’d like to share three sample chapters from the book:

• About PDF Portfolios: learn how to assemble multiple files into an integrated PDF Portfolio
• Actions: run a sample Action and then learn how to create and share Actions with others
• The Document Review Process: learn the basics of how to annotate a PDF file with Acrobat commenting and markup tools and how initiate a shared review with multiple participants

Adobe Acrobat X Classroom in a Book comes to us from Adobe Press, an imprint of Peachpit and the publisher of the popular Classroom in a Book series. The authors for these guides are writers and editors with extensive, real-world knowledge and expertise of Adobe products. Some are even former Adobe employees. 

Adobe Acrobat X Classroom in a Book is now available to order online or through your local bookstore! Keep an eye out for future contests here and at our Twitter page (@Acrobat) for opportunities to win free copies!

Stephanie Baartz-Bowman, Principal Product Marketing Manager, Acrobat

Join Jessica Davis, senior product marketing manager for Reader, for an Adobe Presenter session, which discusses advancements in Adobe Reader X such as online services, Protected Mode in Reader X and mobile support.

Also, be sure to follow @Adobe_Reader for the latest Reader X news, and once you’re seasoned on the new version, download it here!