The PDFMakers were introduced with Acrobat 3.0 to make creating PDFs from Office documents easier and faster. In fact, I created one of the earliest prototypes for the Microsoft Word 6.0 PDFMaker way back in the Acrobat 1.0 days just so that I wouldn’t have to manually add my links and bookmarks every time I had to re-create a PDF from Word. Now, there are PDFMakers for a long list of applications and they do a lot more than just create bookmarks and links.
A PDFMaker is an Acrobat feature that operates within many business applications, such as Microsoft Office applications, AutoCAD, and Lotus Notes. When you install Acrobat, PDFMaker buttons appear in the authoring application. Using PDFMaker within an authoring application is a simple, one-click procedure. It involves clicking an Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar button or choosing a command on the Adobe PDF menu.
Because PDFMakers run in 3rd party applications and we rely on their APIs to help us add navigational controls to the resulting PDF, we’ve been able to add new capabilities to the PDFMakers over time as the APIs in the native applications become more robust. Unfortunately, the 3rd party APIs are not consistent across versions and we need to drop support for a particular PDFMaker feature on a particular version of the 3rd party software. To help better understand which version of Acrobat works best with which version of your other desktop applications, the table below lists the supported and unsupported version information about 3rd party applications supported for PDFMakers across the last 4 Acrobat versions.
Few Points to be noted while observing the table below :
- Acrobat 3D was introduced from Acrobat 7.0.7 onwards which later came to be known as Acrobat Pro Extended.
- In all versions of Acrobat, MS Visio/Project and AutoCAD are supported on Acrobat Pro and higher flavors of Acrobat
- The versions in parentheses denote that particular component was supported starting with that dot release of Acrobat.
- Dates in parentheses denote the release date of applications.
Note: This article is also available as a PDF document.
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Third party software/versions |
Acrobat 6 |
Acrobat 7 | Acrobat 8 | Acrobat 9 |
| MS Office (Word/Excel/PPT) | ||||
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Office 97 |
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| Office 2000 (Office 9) | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11)(11/17/03) | (6.0.1) |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| Word_Import Comments | ||||
| Office 97 | |
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| Office 2000 (office 9) | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11)(11/17/03) | (6.0.1) |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| MS Outlook | ||||
| Outlook 97(January 16, 1997) | |
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| Outlook 2000 (office 9)(June 7, 1999) | |
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| Outlook 2002(May 31, 2001) | |
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| Outlook(Office 11)(10/21/03) | |
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| Outlook (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| Mail Merge | ||||
| Office 97 | |
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| Office 2000 (office 9) | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11)(11/17/03) | |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| Attach As PDF | ||||
| Outlook 97(January 16, 1997) | |
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| Outlook 2000 (office 9)(June 7, 1999) | |
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| Outlook 2002(May 31, 2001) | |
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| Outlook(Office 11)(10/21/03) | (6.0.1) |
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| Outlook (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| Attach As Secured PDF | ||||
| Outlook 97(January 16, 1997) | |
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| Outlook 2000 (office 9)(June 7, 1999) | |
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| Outlook 2002(May 31, 2001) | |
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| Outlook(Office 11)(10/21/03) | |
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| Outlook (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| MS Visio/Project | ||||
| Office 97 | |
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| Office 2000 (office 9) | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11) | (6.0.1) |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| MS Access | ||||
| Office 97 | |
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| Office 2000 (office 9) | N/A | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | N/A | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11) | N/A | |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| MS Publisher | ||||
| Office 97 | |
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| Office 2000 (office 9) | N/A | |
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| Office XP(Office 2002/Office 10) | N/A | |
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| Office 2003(Office 11) | N/A | |
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| Office 2007 (Office 12)(11/30/06) | N/A | N/A | (8.1) |
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| Internet explorer | ||||
| 5.01 | |
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| 5.5 | |
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| 6 | |
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| 6.1 | |
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| 7 | N/A | N/A | |
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| AutoCAD | ||||
| 2000(1999, March) | |
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| 2000i(2000,July) | |
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| 2002(2001,June) | |
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| 2004(2003,march) | (6.0.1) |
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| 2005(2004,march) | N/A | |
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| 2006(2005,march) | N/A | (7.0.7) |
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| 2007(2006,march) | N/A | N/A | |
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| 2008(2007,march) | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| AutoCAD_Import Comments | ||||
| 2000(1999, March) | |
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| 2000i(2000,July) | |
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| 2002(2001,June) | |
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| 2004(2003,march) | |
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| 2005(2004,march) | N/A | |
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| 2006(2005,march) | N/A | (7.0.7) |
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| 2007(2006,march) | N/A | N/A | |
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| 2008(2007,march) | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| Lotus Notes | ||||
| 6.0.x | |
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| 6.5.x | |
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| 7.0.x | |
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| 8.0.1 | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| Mac office | ||||
| Office X | |
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| Office 2004 | N/A | |
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The upcoming Acrobat X will work with Office 2010
You’ll need Acrobat X for Office 2010.
You mention, “You’ll need Acrobat X for Office 2010.”
Does this mean that Acrobat 9 Pro will not work with Office 2010, specifically Publisher 2010? We have a site license and our organization is not currently supplying Acrobat X at this time. If Acrobat X is the only version that works correctly in Office 2010, what other options are available until my organization provides the X version? I specifically need the PDFMaker functionality in Publisher 2010.
With Acrobat 9, the PDFMaker buttons and the Acrobat ribbon won’t show up in Office 2010 but you can still print to PDF through the Adobe PDF driver. You’ll need Acrobat X to get the PDFMaker buttons working with Office 2010. We have no plans to update Acrobat 9 PDFMakers to work with Office 2010.
Can I create email archives within Outlook for Mac 2011 using Acrobat Pro X for Mac? I can’t find that functionality anywhere, even though I have it in my Windows versions of Acrobat Pro and Outlook.
There are no PDFMakers for the Mac platform though that is something that we re-examine with every new release.
Yes, I agree. A PDFMaker for the Mac platform would be a welcome addition.
We have Adobe 9x pro – Office 2003 sp3. For some reason I cannot fine the PDFMaker in outlook. I’ve reinstalled – making sure PDFMaker was installed. Any suggestions?
Be sure you can run add-ons to Outlook
Joel, If I understand your article correctly, my upgraded version of Adobe Acrobat Pro X should work fine with my AutoCAD 2007 full version as far as the create / edit pdf tool bar showing up and functioning properly within AutoCAD. I had this with version 8 Pro that I was using with no problems. As soon as I upgraded to X Pro, toolbars disappeared. I tried apploader solution within autocad, but noticed the acrobat folders did not contain an autocad 2007 folder, ony went to 2008. Please advise and thank you.
Try “Help -> Repair Acrobat Installation” – that should position the files properly for AutoCAD.
Joel, I’m assuming you are referencing Acrobat PX, no such item on the menu. Or are you talking off the installtion disk?
Joel, not sure if you saw my last question, but I didn’t follow exactly what you referenced in your solution. Is this “Repair Acrobat Installation” in the Adobe Acrobat Pro help menu or part of the installation process? Again, I have Acrobat Pro X and AutoCAD 2007 (full version). Thank you for ANY help!!!
Hello?
We can’t get PDFMaker in Acrobat Pro 8.1 to send mail with mail merge in MSWord 2007 to Microsoft Mail (gives MAPI logon unsuccessful error) even though the Word interface to email works. We are thinking of buying Acrobat X to overcome the problem but thought it may be a limitation with MSMail. Does PDFMaker need a simple or extended MAPI and is that different across different Acrobat versions?
You might try posting this to the Acrobat user-to-user forums. This sounds more like a security isse, you may need to give Acrobat permission to access MAPI. http://forums.adobe.com/community/acrobat
I am trying to use Acrobat PDFMaker with MS WORD 2008 for Mac. Searching turns
up no results. There are references to PDFMaker for MS 2007 and 2010 in the text I am using.
am using but none for 2008. How do I get and install the application?
There are no PDF Makers for the Mac. That’s a Windows only feature.