Acrobat XI (Acrobat 11) is the latest version of Acrobat. With each new release, Adobe makes improvements to the product.

You can read about the general improvements in the product on the Acrobat XI product page.

In this article, I’ll discuss a few features which I think are particularly applicable to bio-pharma and life sciences.

Read on for more info.

PDF Editing

For years, I’ve been saying that PDF is primarily an archive format, but Acrobat XI makes it easy to make significant text and graphic edits to PDFs. Text wraps when you edit it and you can easily replace images. You can even add to a bullet list and search and replace text. The redesigned Content Editing panel (see below) makes the process easy to understand.

Audit Trail for Actions

Acrobat Actions allow you to perform multi-step, automatic or user-driven operations on one or many PDF files. Actions are improved in Acrobat XI in a number of ways, but one particularly interesting new feature is the ability to create an report of the operation. This feature can certainly apply in CFR Part 11 workflows if you need to include an audit trail of the steps taken for document preparation.

An HTML report (see sample below) offers a time stamp for each step of the process.

Since Actions may be distributed by admins so that users cannot modify them, this is a good, replicable and "safe" way to include PDF operations in your Standard Operating Procedures.

Save PDF to PowerPoint

When I tried this feature, it floored me! Acrobat can convert PDFs to editable PowerPoint files complete with backgrounds, artwork, and bulleted text.

Redesigned Combine Panel

The Combine documents experience in Acrobat XI is much improved. You can visually swap in pages, change order, and see thumbnails of existing files. Acrobat XI Combine works better on the Mac than previous versions. Mac users now can see thumbnails and convert Office file types, too. You still need to have Microsoft Office on your computer, of course.

Create PDF and Run Action

You can now run an Action directly from a file in Microsoft Office. For example, you might convert a contract to PDF then automatically show the Bookmarks panel and password protect the file.

Restrict Editing Easily

With Acrobat’s new ability to edit PDF, you may wish to protect the important documents you share. Acrobat XI includes new, easier single-step method to add this restriction.

Customize Panel Toolset

Sometimes you just need the tools you use everyday available where you want them! Acrobat XI allows you to create your own custom Toolset with just the tools you need. From a single customization window, you can create your own panel and Quick Tools (toolbar icons). 

The solution scenario is as follows:

• You or an outside agency have revised a document
• You need to send it to stakeholders such as legal,marketing, R&d and other participants for approval of the changes
• After review, you may have further changes to the document if the changes you proposed were not approved

In this article, I’ll discuss how to mark up a document with the changes requiring approval.

In future articles, I’ll cover how to initiate the Shared Review, gather approvals, and roll-up feedback.

More, after the break . . .

Step 1: Indicate Changes which require Approval

Making the approval process easy for participants will ensure that you get your needed feedback quickly and accurately.

The best practice is to mark up the document to indicate the changes which need approval. Here’s how:

1. Launch Acrobat and open the document which need to be approved
2. Open the Comments Panel
   
3. Next, you’ll set defaults for the Rectangle tool which you will use to mark the revised areas of the document.

   A) Open the Drawing Markups section
   B) Right-click on the Rectangle Tool and choose

   

4. You will create a scalloped border style that is easy to spot for your reviewers.
   Here are my recommended settings, but you can choose the style and colors that you like.
   Click OK after you set the style.

   

5. Next, you will use the rectangle tool to mark up areas of your document. Simply select the rectangle tool and click and drag to create the markup rectangle:
   
6. You may add explanatory text to the markup as a way to explain why the change was made.
   A) Switch to the Hand tool
   B) Double-click on the rectangle annotation
   C) A Sticky Note appears in which you may enter text
   

Repeat Steps 5 and 6 for the rest of the changes in the document.

In my next article, I’ll cover how to send the marked up document for review and approval.

It is not uncommon for each new marketing asset to require an extensive review from representatives from the line of business, technical experts, legal, marketing and other stakeholders.

Adobe offers tools in its LiveCycle family of products such as the LiveCycle Managed Review and Approval Accelerator, that help automate, track and move docments through workflow processes.

A server solution is most effective when there are a large number of users who need to be part of the approval process. Of course, to deliver this kind of solution, you need budget and the full support of IT, as well as the time and resources to implement it.

If you are limited in funds and need a solution right away, using a desktop tool like Acrobat can be a great alternative for document review which let’s you get up and running fast with virtually no IT involvement.

Acrobat Shared Review

Acrobat’s Shared Review feature allows multiple people, in real time, to add notes and mark-ups to documents, and to approve or reject suggested changes.

In order for multiple users to interact, a server is needed to act as repository for the comments. Acrobat synchronizes comments between all the users in the review. You can use any network folder that the reviewers can read and write to, or a SharePoint workspace which provides reviewers access.

To extend review to users outside the firewall, your IT organization could set up SharePoint as an extranet providing log-ins for partners.

Each user can choose when they want to publish and receive comments. In this simplified animation below, an Acrobat Pro user is publishing a comment and several Adobe Reader users are receiving the comments.

Note: I only show the syncing as one-way in the animation, but in fact all users can sync their comments with others on the team.

Read on to find out more about Shared Review.

Shared Review and Approval Background Materials

I’ve previously written about using Shared Review and even posted a narrated presentation. In that article, I covered how to set-up Shared Review in Acrobat 9.

Acrobat X offers a few additional features, notably the ability to relocate the review documents which broke workflows previously.

Here are some links to short videos Shared Review in Acrobat X::

• Getting Started: The Basics of Commenting on Anything in a PDF File
• How Acrobat X Facilitates and Manages a Shared Review with Ease
• How to Track your Review in Acrobat

The videos above adequately cover reviewing PDFs, but don’t address Acrobat’s ability to actually approve changes.

Approval Scenarios

A common time-consuming task in bio-pharma is managing changes in existing collateral. Whenver a change occurs, approvals from various stakeholders are required,

Here are two possible scenarios that you might encounter:

1. A review coordinator (you?) marks up existing PDFs and highlights proposed changes
2. Approvers review the changes and may accept them, reject them or suggest alternatives

1. An outside agency or internal marketing team will make changes to a document and PDF it
2. Changed items are highlighted by a Review Coordinator (you?)
3. Approvers review the changes and may accept them, reject them or suggest alternatives

Acrobat allows reviewers to approve or reject any suggested change:

Approve or Reject a change	See Results in Comments List

Making the Process Work Internally

As a review coordinator, you have a big stake in getting documents reviewed accurately and on time. That’s certainly the advantage of Shared Review for you, but in order to gain the cooperation of your colleagues, you’ll need to not only sell them on the idea but also make it easy for them to participate.

Here are some tips to sell this concept internally;

In my next article, I’ll walk you through the process of marking up changes and sending the file out for Shared Review.

Read on for Using Acrobat Shared Review for Approval Workflows – Part 2

Many organizations generate Word and PDF documents which need to be converted in a cross-linked set of documents for submission or for internal use.

Using Microsoft Word, you can create a hyperlink to PDF document easily. Simply select some text in your Word document, right-click and choose hyperlink, then point to a PDF:

While it is easy to link to a PDF, that doesnt’ always suit the needs of a busy reglatory professional.

When there are a number of documents which are rapidly changing during the authoring cycle, it can be extremely handy to link to sub-documents (Word files) to allow for quick editing and changes.

That was probably the reason I received the following enquiry via email regarding link capabilities of Acrobat:

If I have several word documents in a directory and the one document is the main Table of contents, I can create links from it to the others where clicking on the link will open the corresponding Word document. When I convert these documents to PDF, the links are broken. Is there a way around this?

Unfortunately, neither Word or the PDF Maker plug-in for Acrobat offer this functionality. When converted to PDF, links in the Word file are maintained to the original source DOC file. In other words, a link to a Word file (in Word) will be a link to a Word file when converted to PDF.

However, there are some workflow tips and workarounds you can use to work around this.
Read on!

Understanding the Process

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, in the next few paragraphs I’ll discuss how to take a group of cross-linked Word files and convert them to a series of cross-linked PDFs.

Approaches

There are a few different ways you might solve this problem. The best choice will depend on your particular needs.

Use a dummy document system
Convert your collection of Word files to PDF and then link to the PDFs. As you edit the Word docs, just re-pdf them to replace them. This presumes you don’t need to actively use the Word to Word links during the authoring process. If you do, then this approach won’t work for you.

Post-process links in Acrobat using a Plug-in
Use an Acrobat plug-in to post-process the links such as AutoBookmark or ISI Toolbox. These plug-ins allow you to do batch search and update of links in a PDF easily. One nice feature of this solution is that you can also change many other link properties at the same time.

Use Find and Replace in Word to change the link destinations before converting to PDF
You can use a "hidden" feature of Word to change link destinations in bulk. This approach works fine as long as the document name in Word and (when converted to) PDF is the same. Make sure you do this on a copy of the document.

Here’s how . . .

1. Convert all of your sub-documents to PDF.
2. Make a copy of the main document you wish to change then open it in Word.

   Below, is a table with links to other documents.
   

3. Hit ALT-F9 in Word to show the field codes. All of the hyperlink destinations will appear:
   
4. Type CTRL-F to open the Navigation window in Word.
5. Click the fly-out menu of the Search window and choose Replace . . .
   
6. The Search and Replace window appears.
   Find what: = .docx
   Replace with = .pdf
   Click Replace All
   
7. Word displays a window detailing the number of replacements made. Click OK.
   
   The result is below.( I’ve highlighted the changes.)
   
8. Type ALT-F9 to turn off the Field Codes.
9. Convert the document to PDF using the Adobe PDF Maker integrated into Word.

As long as the sub-documents are located in the same file, all your links in the resulting PDFs will work.

A More Complicated Set-up

In the example above, the main document contained all the links to the sub-documents. What if you had a more complicated set of documents such as the one below?

For a more complicated set of documents, skip Step 1 above, and use the Replace function in Word to change all the links from .DOC to .PDF in all of the documents. Convert each to PDF and all your links should resolve.

Recently, Fast Company posted this article:

Can Health Care 2.0 Be as Easy as Craigslist? Craig Thinks So

The subject of the article was Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark who was interviewed about the work he is doing with the Department of Veteran Affairs to better utilize technology for healthcare.

The article notes that Adobe won the VA’s first Blue Button Developer Challenge for the creation of an interactive platform for medical records. An image of the Adobe application is included in the article.

One thing I found interesting was to learn about how the VA is going about bringing their technology up to date:

 . . . the VA will open source its new health care ecosystem, permitting a community of developers to
co-construct the new database and allow outside institutions to modify
the codebase for their own systems. The vision is a system that permits
real-time communication between patients and doctors and isn’t held
hostage by either a painfully slow government entity or a single,
inflexible corporate partner. For developers, this means a whole new
sub-industry of opportunity.

Now, that’s forward thinking for a government agency!

]]> http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2011/03/healthcare-as-easy-as-craigslist/feed/ 0 http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/04/removing_security_from_pdfs_in/ http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/04/removing_security_from_pdfs_in/#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:20:44 +0000 Rick Borstein http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/04/removing-security-from-pdfs-individually-and-in-batch.html Continue reading →]]> Acrobat files may be secured using passwords, digital certificates or using rights management (provided by Adobe’s LiveCycle Rights Management server).

PDF documents circulated between sponsors, partners and clinical staff are often secured to prevent changes and leakage of information.

PDFs which are secured cannot be changed. That means it is not possible to add links, bookmarks or combine pages from these files as part of your regular document operations. That certainly can pose a problem for regulatory professionals who need full access to these documents to prepare submissions.

Because life science firms frequently secure PDFs, it was not too surprising when I received a message last week from a large bio-pharma company which posed this question:

Is there a way to batch process the removal of a password from multiple PDFs?

Thee same password is used on multiple files . . .

If you know the password for a PDF, you can remove security from the document and make it available for editing. Just click the Secure button, then choose Remove Security:

You’ll be asked to enter your password, click OK, then save the document.

While not difficult, that process is cumbersome when you have many documents— perhaps hundreds— which need processing.

Fortunately, if you have Acrobat Pro, you can remove security from documents in batch!

In this article, I’ll discuss how to:

1. Check security on a PDF
2. Remove security in batch for many PDFs which use the same password.

Read on to learn more.

Checking Security on a PDF

When you open a PDF that has a password, you’ll see some immediate indications that the file is secure.

Viewing and changing settings are just a click away.

A) The Title Bar of the document will display SECURED

B) The Navigation Panel will include a lock ICON

Unless you’ve changed the default user interface, you’ll also see (C) a Security button. The Security Button offers quick, one-click access to (D) view your security settings. If you choose Show Security Properties, you can see what rights have been assigned to the document:

The Two Passwords of PDF

When you password protect a PDF, you can set a password which . . .

• Is required to open a document (the OPEN password)
• Limits use of printing, copying or commenting (the USAGE RESTRICTION password)

Open passwords and Usage Restriction passwords may be used individually or both may be present.

When removing security in Batch, you have to know which password to use:

Creating a Batch Sequence to Remove Security from Multiple PDF Documents

Follow these steps to remove security from multiple PDF documents using Acrobat Pro.

First, you’ll need to change a preference so that Acrobat will allow you to enter a password when you run a batch sequence.

1. Choose Edit> Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat>Preferences (Mac)
2. Click the Batch Processing category at the left.
3. Set the Security Method to Password
4. Click OK
   

   Tip:You may wish to enable the check box "Save warnings and errors in log file". If Acrobat cannot process a file, you’ll have a handy report you can use.

1. Choose Advanced> Document Processing> Batch Processing
2. Click the New Sequence button and name your sequence (e.g. Remove Security)
3. Click the Select Commands Button
4. The Edit Sequence window appears. Make the following changes:
   A) Choose Security from the list at the left
   B) Click the Add>> button
   C) Set Security Method to None (should be the default)
   D) Click the OK button
   
   
5. Click the Close button

Running the Sequence

Running the sequence is simple. Beforehand, gather up all of the documents you wish to unprotect into a folder to make the process simpler.

1. Choose Advanced> Document Processing> Batch Processing
2. Click the sequence you want to run (e.g. Remove Security) and click the Run Sequence button
   
3. Click OK in the Run Sequence Confirmation window.
4. Enter the password to your files and click the OK button
   
5. Next, you’ll need to locate the files.
   A) Select your files
   B) Click the Select Files button
   
6. The files will be processed.

Some Final Thoughts

It is very important to take note of the table I placed above.

If you are trying to unlock a document which has both an open password and a usage restriction, you must enter the usage restriction password. Acrobat will appear to process the file, but the document will remain locked. Oddly, Acrobat did not log this as an error.

If you enter the wrong password for a file, Acrobat will not open the file and the error will be logged.

We can’t move to a newer version of Acrobat because we have to make PDF 1.4 files for agency submissions.

Put succinctly— that just isn’t true.

Acrobat XI (and previous versions) can easily save back to previous versions.

In fact, you can set Acrobat to create files in the version you want all the time, by adjusting a few simple settings.

I’ve previously written about two related topics:

• How to Change PDF Versions for Agency Compliance
• How to create a PDF Settings file for Acrobat Font Embedding for Agency Submissions

In this article, I will discuss how to:

1. Saving and Loading PDF Settings
   1. Save out an older PDF setting to move to a new system
   2. Load a PDF setting into Acrobat
2. Setting the default PDF Setting for:
   1. PDF Print Driver
   2. Word, Excel and PowerPoint
   3. Creating PDF from the desktop, in batch or when combining documents
3. Tips for Setting Defaults when deploying Acrobat

Read on to learn more.

Saving and Loading PDF Settings

PDF Settings Files— also called Distiller Settings or Job Options files— are small text files which instruct Acrobat to create a PDF file using certain specifications.

This file will be named name.joboptions and is a plain text file and is compatible with Acrobat 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and probably beyond.

Below is the PDF Settings file I use to show standard settings for FDA regulatory compliance.

Right-click on the icon and choose:

• Internet Explorer
  Save Target As . . .
• FireFox
  Save Link As . . .

Save out an older PDF setting to move to a new system

The PDF Settings files are located in different locations depending on the version of Acrobat and the operating system.

Rather than list the paths for all the different combinations, here is a much simpler way to find and save a PDF Setting.

1. Launch Acrobat
2. Choose Advanced> Print Production> Acrobat Distiller
3. Select the Setting you wish to copy from the menu:
   
4. Choose Settings> Edit Adobe PDF Settings  . . .
5. Click the Save As button and save the Settings file (name.joboptions) to a location of your choice.
6. In Distiller, change the default settings back if you changed them.

Load a PDF Setting into Acrobat

Adding a PDF setting to your Acrobat installation is simple.

1. Launch Acrobat
2. Choose Advanced> Print Production> Acrobat Distiller
3. Choose Settings> Add Adobe PDF Settings . . .
4. Locate the name.joboptions file and click the Open button

Setting Default PDF Settings for the PDF Print Driver and Office Apps

Acrobat offers a multitude of methods for creating PDFs from Office documents:

• Via the AdobePDF Print driver
• Via the PDFmaker buttons installed into popular office applications
• By combining native documents using the Combine function in Acrobat

Each approach will require some set-up to ensure that all documents created have fonts embedded.

Setting Default PDF Maker Settings for the Adobe PDF Print Driver

Follow these steps to set the Adobe PDF Print Driver to always use the Embed All setting:

1. From any application, choose File—> Print.
   A)
   Select the Adobe PDF from the Name list.
   B)Click the Properties (may also be called Preferences on Windows Vista/7) button
   
2. Choose a PDF Setting from the Default Settings list and then Click OK

The setting will remain “sticky” for the next time you print to the AdobePDF Print Driver.

Setting a Default PDF Setting for Office PDF Makers

Acrobat installs 1-button PDF conversion toolbars and menus into popular Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project and Internet Explorer. The Acrobat-Office integration is called a “PDF Maker”.

Follow these steps to set an Office PDFmaker button to always use the Embed All setting. The example below is from Microsoft Word.

1. Launch the application of your choice, but do not open a document.
2. In your version of Office, make the following change:
   1. In Office 2003 or Office XP, Choose AdobePDF—> Change Conversion Settings
   2. In Office 2007, choose the Acrobat and click Preferences
3. Choose a PDF Setting from the Conversion Settings list
   
4. Click OK

Setting a Default PDF Maker Setting for Combine or Create from Desktop in Acrobat

Besides printing to the Adobe PDF Print Driver or using the PDF Makers, there are other methods to convert native files to PDF:

• Create or Combine Files from the desktop
• Batch Processing
• File—> Create PDF—> From File . . . in Acrobat
• File—> Combine Files
•  . . . and others

When conversion takes place using these direct methods, you need to specify the desired conversion setting in Acrobat Preferences for each application supported.

1. In Acrobat, choose Edit—> Preferences
2. Click on the Convert to PDF category from the list at left
3. Click the Edit Settings button
   A) Select the Convert to PDF Category

   B) Select an application (e.g. Microsoft Office Word)
   C) Click the Edit Settings button

   

4. In the Edit Settings window, change the default Conversion Setting to the desired setting
5. Click OK
6. Repeat for all applications

If you have Microsoft Office, you will need to make changes in the Convert To section for all of these applications:

• Microsoft Office Word
• Microsoft Office Excel
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint

Tips for Setting Default PDF Settings during Deployment

IT Professionals are concerned with pushing out Acrobat installations that meet the needs of their users.

Using Adobe’s free Acrobat 9 Customization Wizard, you can set preferences and behaviors for user installations of Acrobat, including the PDF Settings deployed and set as defaults for users.

1. Download and start the Acrobat 9 Customization Wizard
2. Choose File—> Open and locate the Acrobat MSI file
3. Choose the Distiller category on the left
4. Click the ADD button to import your PDF Setting
   
5. Set the imported setting as the default:
   A)Choose your Setting from the list
   B)Click the Set as Default button
   
6. The default setting will have a red outline:
   

]]> http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/01/can_new_versions_of_acrobat_cr/feed/ 0 http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/01/slides_for_1222010_acrobat_for/ http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/01/slides_for_1222010_acrobat_for/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:20:21 +0000 Rick Borstein http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatforlifesciences/2010/01/slides-for-1222010-acrobat-for-life-sciences-eseminar.html Continue reading →]]> Did you attend my January 22, 2010 Life Science eSeminar?

Here are the slides I promised to share.

Options for Getting the Slides

You can get the slide two ways:

1. From my Acrobat.com account
   Preferred, since there is much greater bandwidth.
2. Directly from this blog

Acrobat.com Method

https://acrobat.com/#d=vA3q2L8cDZuAcxmsWSDpTQ

Direct Download

Acrobat_Life_Science_Seminar_Blog (PDF)

Right-click and choose Save As or Save Target or just click the link to open the PDF in a browser window.

Enjoy!

The narrative for the slides may be found in a sticky note on each page.

However, when I talk to most firms in bio-pharma, I find that they are not always using the tools to best advantage. And, of course, I still see lots of paper-based review workflows.

Acrobat’s Shared Review capability allows multiple people, in real time, to review a document corroboratively. That can help accelerate review and help you meet deadlines.

Below is a screen shot of a product label that is part of a Shared Review.

How does Shared Review Work?

So, you may be wondering . . . how does it work and what benefits does it offer me?

I’ve put together an 11-minute, narrated slide deck to help explain how it works.

I’ve titled it "Enterprise Collaboration with Adobe Acrobat 9". In the presentation, I cover the findings from a recent Forrester Consulting study on collaboration, and then show you how to collaborate better using Acrobat.

Read on to get it.

Get the Enterprise Collaboration Presentation

You can access the presentation two ways:

Watch Presentation Online

You’ll need the Flash player to watch the presentation below. It will open in a new window.

Watch Enterprise Collaboration with Adobe Acrobat 9.

Download the presentation for playback via Acrobat

I embedded the presentation in a PDF you can download. You will need Adobe Reader 9 or Acrobat 9 to view the file.

Click here to download the presentation.

The link above will take you to Acrobat.com and show you a preview of the file. Click the Download button in the upper left corner of the window.

Download the Materials
The links below will take you to my Acrobat.com account where you can download the materials.
If you have trouble downloading the file:
1) Make sure you have turned off pop-up blockers or checked browser security
2) Ensure that your company has not blocked access to acrobat.com
Main Slides
eSubmissions Solution Accelerator Slides