My colleague Mark Middleton and I are hitting the web to do five free, educational eSeminars on various feature areas of Acrobat 9 including digital signatures, security, forms, collaboration and PDF portfolios.

• These 1-hour online events are absolutely free
• All Sessions run  1-2 EDT / 12-1 CDT / 11-12 MDT / 10-11 PDT

During these events, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions via our chat pod.

I've included a summary of all of the events below and you can register for all of them (at once) using the link below.

Register for the Acrobat eSeminars

Here's the list of free eSeminars:

I've included a description of each eSeminar in the full article.

Continue reading "Five Upcoming Free Acrobat eSeminars in June and July" »

Posted by Rick Borstein at 3:46 AM | Permalink

I recently received the following inquiries from customers::

Some of my Excel files contain more than  one worksheet. I would like to convert the second worksheet in an Excel file to the same PDF.

I have over 1000 Excel documents to convert to PDF as part of a regulatory filing. Is there a way to convert these all to PDF in batch?

I'll tackle both of these needs in this article.

Converting Multiple Worksheets

Fortunately, Acrobat 8 and later can easily convert all of the worksheets in your Excel files to PDF:

When you use the PDF Maker in Acrobat 9, you have some additional options to select just the worksheets needed:

A) Choose options to convert all worksheets, the currently selected worksheet or a subset of the worksheets.

B) To choose some worksheets, but not others, select from the list on the left and use the Add or Remove buttons to move them to the list on the right.

C) Click the Convert to PDF button to complete the process

The result is a nicely bookmarked PDF that looks like this:

What about batch conversion?

If you want to convert many Excel documents in batch to PDF, there are a few additional tricks involved. Read on learn how in the rest of the article.

Continue reading "Batch Conversion of Excel Files to PDF" »

Posted by Rick Borstein at 10:30 AM | Permalink

The pharmaceutical industry uses a lot of data. Consequently, we see a lot of tabular data converted to PDF documents. It is common to see lab instrument data, database reports and enterprise systems data output as PDF.

So, there you are, alone in your office staring at a PDF document wishing you had access to the original data. What do you do?

Fortunately, Acrobat 9.1 offers a couple of different ways to export to Excel.

1. Select table and open in Excel
   This allows you to select a portion of a page and open it in Excel.
   
   
2. Export as Tables in Excel
   This method uses some artificial intelligence to convert multiple page PDF documents to multiple worksheets in an XML-based spreadsheet file. It works best on files which were converted directly from Excel to PDF.

Acrobat generally will usually do a pretty good job converting the text, but formatting and column widths will look different than the original. Acrobat only copies over the text. Formulas will not convert. Do not expect 100% fidelity.

In the full article, you'll receive my usual step-by-step instructions.

Continue reading "Converting a PDF file to Excel Format" »

Posted by Rick Borstein at 11:21 PM | Permalink

Adobe recently released security updates to Acrobat and Adobe Reader 7, 8 and 9.

Large Life Science corporations centrally distribute software to users, most often on the Windows platform.

In this article, I'll discuss the tools and techniques that are available to help IT personnel deploy and update versions of Acrobat 7, 8 and 9, including the free Adobe Reader.

First, I'll show you where you can download the apps and our tools for deployment. In the full article, I'll discuss how to "chain" installs, expand Adobe Reader, and use the Adobe Customization Wizard to streamline installation.

Get the Updates and the Deployment Tools

Various updates are available depending on the version of Acrobat and/or Reader you have installed. To make it easier to customize Acrobat, Adobe offers installation tools which help you remove earlier versions of Acrobat, serialize the product, and set a wide variety of program options.

The links below are for Windows versions. Mac Acrobat users can find updates here.

Adobe generally does not issue complete, new packages for dot releases, so it's important to properly "chain" these installs. I'll also discuss how to expand the Adobe Reader to make it installable, and discuss the Acrobat Customization Wizard and other resources available. Read on for this information.

NOTE: If you receive my blog via email, make sure you click on the article title to read it on my blog.

Continue reading "Tips and Techniques for Deployment and Patching of Acrobat" »

Posted by Rick Borstein at 11:09 PM | Permalink

Today, my colleagues Mark Middleton, Ed Chase and I conducted a joint eSeminar with the SAFE Bio-Pharma Association called:

Using SAFE- BioPharma Digital Signatures in Adobe Acrobat 9

I'll post a link to the recording soon.

I've included three downloads that you might find useful:

1. Adobe Acrobat Slides
   Go over the digital signing process in Acrobat
   
   
2. SAFE Slides
   Covers the business benefits of using SAFE signatures
   
   
3. Adobe LiveCycle eSubmissions Solutions Accelerator
   Slides on Adobe's server-based review and approval systems which can be part of an audited, CFR-Part 11 workflow
   
   
4. Digital Signatures Cheat Sheet
   Helps you understand the various status messages associated with digital signatures

Read on to get the good stuff.

Continue reading "Materials for Using SAFE- BioPharma Digital Signatures in Adobe Acrobat 9" »

Posted by Rick Borstein at 9:48 PM | Permalink