Firstly, the order is important.

1. Encrypt your document, using password, certificate or LiveCycle Rights Management (née Policy Server) encryption methods.
2. If needed, certify or digitally sign your file.
3. Finally, send your encrypted document for email-based or shared review.

Secondly, you need to remember to give the encrypted document the right permissions.

If you are using password or certificate-based security, make sure the permissions allow for commenting…

If you are using Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, make sure the policy includes “Collaborate” permissions for the users or groups who can access the file and participate in the review…

Why is this important?

In short, it has to do with the extended features for Adobe Reader that PDF documents enabled for shared reviews with Acrobat 9 Pro and Pro Extended (and Acrobat 8 Professional and 3D) will also have.

When opening these PDF files with extended features, also known as Reader Extensions, Acrobat will prevent changes to the PDF file, except for commenting (and form filling and digital signing if selected too). Therefore, you cannot encrypt a PDF document after you have enabled it for shared reviews (or just added Extended Features by themselves from the Advanced or Comments menus in Acrobat). The same applies for PDF forms that you distribute using Acrobat 9 Standard, Pro or Pro Extended.

Fortunately, Acrobat 9 will warn you if you try to encrypt a document that has already been enabled for shared review, forms data collection or extended features…

And you can see in the Restrictions Summary in the Document Properties dialog box that you cannot make changes to the PDF document…

Let me know how that works for you, and if you are sending documents for review securely.

Do you add comments like highlights or ovals, and then add a sticky note comment to explain the first comment? You don’t have to double up the comments like that. Instead, double-click the comment on the page to open a popup note, and type your message. Your users see a miniature comment talk balloon over the comment, indicating there’s an attached message.

It’s a matter of personal preference, but if you want to get your message across in the comments you add to a PDF file, say as part of a Shared Review, this is the better way to do it. Otherwise, it can be hard for the person collecting comments and the other reviewers to see how the highlight or drawing markup you added is associated with the separate sticky note you then put somewhere near it.

But the really productive part is after you have received comments from others on a PDF version of the document, possibly via a Shared Review. That is the time you will want to apply – or integrate – the changes to the source Word document: you got it, Acrobat can help you out here too by exporting PDF comments from Acrobat back to Word.

[As I stated in Part 1, this method applies only to supported versions of Microsoft Word on Windows. Apologies to my Mac brothers and sisters.]

Before you get started, I suggest opening the PDF file with comments, going through the feedback and suggested changes from reviewers. This is so you ca determine what is exported to Word and then integrated for you [this is optional, but will save you some time later if you have a lot of suggested changes, some of which you know won't be integrated]. You can do one or both of the following:

1. Marking the valid ones with a checkmark by right-clicking the comments and choosing “Mark with Checkmark” or just clicking the checkbox to the left of the comments in the Comment List of the Comments Navigation Panel. Note that this checkmark won’t appear in the document when viewed by others. Otherwise…
2. Right-click on a comment and choose “Set Status > Review” and either “Accepted” or “Rejected”. You can also do this from the Comments List. Others will see this status for the comment as part of the review.

With that done, let’s get to work…

Export PDF Comments From Acrobat to Word

To get started, choose Comments > Export Comments to Word… in Acrobat, or if you have the Comments list open, choose Export Comments to Word… from the Comments List Options button.

What this will do is launch Microsoft Word, if it isn’t open already, and now that you are there, open the “Import Comments from Adobe Acrobat” wizard [I know, I know, that's not the exact title of this article, but it is the same thing really]. If you are already in Word, or have the original DOC/DOCX document open, you can also go to the Acrobat ribbon (or menu) and choose “Import Comments from Acrobat…” under “Acrobat Comments”.

If you haven’t been through this before, a screen of instructions will appear first: click OK to continue. You will then see one of three possible scenarios, depending on how you launched the wizard:

• If you are coming from Acrobat in this step, the PDF file you had open before with all the comments will be shown under “Take comments from this PDF file:”.
• If you launched the wizard from within Word and the source DOC/DOCX file was open, it will be listed under “Place comments in this Word file:”. By default, the wizard will look for a PDF file in the same folder and with the same file name, and if it finds it, lists that too. It’s assuming that PDF file is the one that has comments.
• If you got to the wizard from Word with no file open, both fields will be blank.

Whatever gets listed there for files, you can change it by clicking on the “Browse…” button.

You can then choose what you would like to import to Word:

• All Comments. This includes drawing markups such as polygons and callouts. If a comment or markup has a pop-up with text in it, then this will be made the text for the Word comment. The PDF comment or markup type, and the date that the comment was made, are also added to the Word comment text. For example, “Comment [08/21/09#3]:Highlight: The text from the pop-up.”
• All Comments with Checkmarks.This will only include comments and markup that you checked off using Acrobat’s Comments List, for example.
• Text Edits only: Insertions, Deletions and Replaces. This will just integrate the suggested changes to the Word document, and not just add the Text Edits as Word comments.
• Custom Filters, for the comments you would like to include and apply. With this option you can be choosy about what is imported and applied to the Word document, including which authors comments you would like incorporated. For example, you can specify that only comments and markup that you have checked and accepted be imported by the wizard. Everything else will be ignored.

Finally for this part, as you can see from the previous image, you can also instruct the wizard to turn on Word’s Track Changes feature so you can see what gets changed once the wizard has completed its task.

Once you are back at the start of the wizard, the real fun begins when you click the “Continue” button.

First, the wizard will go ahead and import all the PDF comments into the Word document (unless you filtered them using the options I mentioned before). You should see them over on the right hand side of the pages, as expected with Word comments, pointing to the location where they were originally added to the PDF file. You will get the best results here if the Word document was converted to a PDF file using Acrobat PDFMaker and was tagged, but it still works otherwise. The wizard will then report back on how many comments were imported to Word, breaking it up by Text Edits and Other Comments:

If you thought that was cool, just wait for the next part…Integrate Text Edits is the next optional step (click Cancel to skip it), and it does just what it says on the tin. The wizard will go through the imported insertion, deletion or replacement Text Edits comments, and apply those changes for you. Acrobat is even doing your work for you now!

You can apply or discard them one-by-one by clicking on the appropriate button. You can then either click “Next”, or check the “Automatically go to next” option, and the wizard will jump to the next Text Edit comment and move the dialog and document so you can see the highlighted area to be changed. If you know you want to apply them all because you have already checked and/or accepted them in Acrobat beforehand, go ahead and click “Apply All Remaining”.

You don’t have to use what you see in the “New Text” field. As you can see in this example, a typo was missed in the original Text Edit comment: I don’t believe the author of this document really wants to extol the virtues of causing unwanted and annoying color changes to garments, but would rather mention the commitment to environmentally responsible practices [granted, I am the one who made the mistake]. Just go ahead and type in to that field what the text should be, and that is what the wizard will use.

Once all the changes have been applied, the wizard wraps things up by giving you a final report on the text integrations it made, with a couple of tips for cleaning things up in your Word document via the Acrobat ribbon/menu, including merging tracked changes and deleting comment bubbles.

Now think back to what you just read or tried yourself, and how you would have gotten to that same result before. If you were lucky to have two monitors, you may have the PDF and DOC/DOCX files open side-by-side and visually scanned from comment to comment applying those changes as you saw fit. If you had only one monitor, it was either a) very large or b) you are beginning to wear out your Alt and Tab keys on your keyboard. You may also have printed out the PDF document with comments, or the Comments Summary from Acrobat, and visually scanned that for changes to make [not very (su)stainable]. Either way, it was a process that was certainly slower than using Acrobat’s Export(Import) Comments command, and probably had a greater risk of introducing errors or missing important changes.

Give this real time-saver a try and see how it works out for you. Remember, for best results use a PDF document that was created from the same Word document using Acrobat PDFMaker – no refrigeration after opening required.

So how could you use them together? As expected, Microsoft Word can be used for seeing what’s changed as you author the document and go through versions, and Acrobat to gather feedback from one or more reviewers where they all the see the same thing, including other reviewers comments, without changing things in the document and without having to buy additional software. As you go through review cycles and various iterations of the document, you can incorporate comments and markup between the DOC/DOCX and PDF files, as well as have Acrobat apply the suggested and accepted changes for you back in to the source.

I have split these tips in to two entries: first up, going from Word to Acrobat…

[I am using Microsoft Word 2007 for these tips, but you can certainly use earlier supported versions of Word too. Sorry my Mac brothers and sisters who use Office 2008: this doesn't apply to you. You can skip over this blog entry, but there are lots of others you can read instead.]

Export Comments From Word to PDF

If you already have comments in the source Word document, you can include those in the resulting PDF file that you send out for review.

First go into your Acrobat PDFMaker Preferences, either from the Acrobat ribbon in Word 2007, or the Acrobat menu in an earlier version of Word. Click on the Word tab. Select “Convert displayed comments to notes in Adobe PDF” (it’s deselected by default).

Once you have checked that off, you can then be more selective about what is converted to sticky notes in the PDF file. For each reviewer you can:

• set whether to include their comments in the resulting PDF file
• decide whether the notes should be open or not in the PDF file
• choose the color the sticky notes will be (keep clicking the colored note to cycle through some standard colors)

Click OK to set the preferences (remember that PDFMaker preferences are sticky and will be used the next time you create a PDF file from Word this way). When you create the PDF file by clicking on the Create PDF button on the Word ribbon/toolbar (don’t create the PDF by printing to the Adobe PDF in this case), you will get a PDF file with the notes placed where you originally clicked to add a Word comment.

Acrobat will use the user name as configured in Word’s options as the Author for the PDF note. The note Subject will be empty as there is no equivalent in Word comments. And Accept and Reject are not flags in Word as they are in Acrobat – accepting a Word comment just keeps it in the document – so that is also ignored.

I have to thank the Acrobat engineering for also remembering to set the opacity of the notes in the resulting PDF to 30%, otherwise the notes would be covering all the text!

Note that if you send out the document for a Shared Review, these comments will have a new Author (whoever initiated the review) with “On behalf of…” added to the note pop-up text.

[It's the little details that Acrobat 9 has that I personally love and that make all the difference.]

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article where I walk you through exporting PDF comments from Acrobat back to Word, and have Acrobat apply edits for you.

“What does the Migrate Comments command do, and how should I use the Migration status flags?”

Migrate Comments

If you only send out one draft version of a document for review before distributing the final version you are either a) brave or b) very very good. But I am sure you, like me, actually send two or more versions to others before finalizing the document. If your manager’s manager’s manager is as busy as mine, that might mean comments come back to you on a document after you have already sent out a new version. This newer version incorporates suggested changes from those who did get their comments back to you on time. So do you just ignore your manager’s manager’s managers feedback? That is probably not a good career move. Instead, you can migrate those late-arriving comments from an older version of the document in to the newer version using the “Migrate Comments” command.

But how does Acrobat know where to put those comments when you have already changed the document? It does so by looking at the text and structure of the document to determine where the comment or markup should go in the new version. This works best if the PDF documents are tagged, ideally created using something like PDFMaker for Microsoft Office and other applications, or when exporting to a Tagged PDF from Adobe InDesign.

The Acrobat 9 Help file describes best what happens to each comment type:

• Text comments that reference particular words, such as highlights, cross-outs, and insertion carets, appear within the word grouping where they were originally placed.
• Drawing markups and sticky notes appear in the same structural location as they did in the original document.
• Circle, polygon, rectangle, and stamp comments always appear on the same page as the original document.

To use the command, first open the two versions of the document with the comments in them. Then go to the Comments menu and choose “Migrate Comments”

If Acrobat cannot find the words or structure in the newer document that a comment was associated with in the older one, it will just place it on the page as it appeared before, unless the page has been deleted in which case it gets placed on the last page (well it has to go somewhere!). Text edits are converted to sticky note comments.

Migration Status Flags

There are several properties that you can apply (or see but not apply) to annotations on PDF files: your login name, the time and date the annotation was applied, icon, color and so on.

One of those properties is a “Migration Status”. If you look at the Migrate Comments dialog box above, you will see that Acrobat gives you the option to “Review migrated comments in the Comments list”. This will set each of the migrated comments with a “Not confirmed” migration status flag, then show those only in the Comments Navigation Panel. You can then check each one out to see if they are still applicable, and if so, set their status to “Confirmed” from either the Comments Navigation Panel toolbar or by right-clicking the annotation.

These are really nothing more than flags: use them in the way that suits you best for your document review workflow. And they are there to make sure that your manager’s manager’s manager’s comments are all incorporated as quickly as possible, in case this time around she does look at the next version of the plan faster than usual.

The first one will show you how to initiate a shared review with Acrobat 9 that uses a SharePoint document library as the review location.

The second video shows a few things for SharePoint administrators to consider when setting up a workspace for the purposes of a shared review with Acrobat.

I would feel guilty if I didn’t mention Omtool Swiftwriter, a free plug-in that allows both Acrobat and Adobe Reader to open and save PDF files to SharePoint and other document management systems. You can find out more from their website.

Finally, if you are using SharePoint today, especially with Acrobat and Adobe Reader, the product management team would love to hear from you. Check this Shredding the Document article for more details. Otherwise, feel free to post a comment here about how you are using Acrobat with SharePoint, or what you would like to see.

Firstly, a little background: when you send a PDF document to others for a shared review, you may have seen that Acrobat 9 (and 8) will lock the document down to prevent changes. This is to protect the “Enable for Commenting in Reader” functionality in the document from being accidentally removed or “damaged”: this way, those who only have the free Adobe Reader 8 or 9 can participate as expected. And hence, you are unable to change pages.

In order to add or delete pages in this scenario, you have to end the shared review, and then start a new one with the modified document. This is good practice: it ensures all reviewers are looking at and adding comments to precisely the same file, helping the review go along much smoother. The Review Tracker in Acrobat 9 can help with ending a shared review, then starting a new one with the same reviewers.

If you don’t have access to the original document, or you were not the initiator, you can still use the PDF document that was part of the shared review (the one that Acrobat created when you stepped through the “Send for Shared Review” wizard). You need to “disconnect” that local copy from the Shared Review. You can do so by choosing File > Save as Archive Copy… or by clicking on the server status button on the yellow shared review information bar at the top of the document and choosing “Save as Archive Copy…”

Acrobat will warn you that archiving the document means it is no longer part of a shared review, but that it will still contain all the comments that were added up to that point in an editable state.

Open that archive copy, which by default will have “_archive” appended to its file name. That may not be the one you see in Acrobat once you save the archived version – that is still the shared review document. And as you will notice, the archive version has no more shared review functionality, and therefore, no more security as a result of the enable for Adobe Reader. You are now free to go about doing what you need to do this copy of the PDF document.

Thanks to everyone that attended from all over the globe. I hope you found the information useful. If you asked a question live, but were not able to get a response, you can post your question(s) to the Review and Commenting forum on AcrobatUsers.com.

For those of you that were not able to make it, here are some of the things that I covered:

• Initiating an email-based document review
• Importing comments
• Initiating a Shared Review using an internal server (including Microsoft SharePoint) or Acrobat.com
• Tips on using the commenting tools

As it happens with these live events, there is never enough time to cover everything I would like to. So one of my goals for this blog is to cover the things I did not get to in the live event. So, please do check out the recording, then check back here or in your favorite newsreader for additional how-to’s and tips. Let me know what you thought of the event, and what else you would like to see or find about.

You will need to create a new Server Location. But Acrobat 9 will not let you create one with the same name as one that already exists when you go through the “Send for Review” steps. Therefore, you will need to delete the old Location first. To do that, we need to take a trip down to Preferences. So open those up using Edit > Preferences…(Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences…(Mac), and select the “Tracker” preferences from the list on the right.

There you will see the “Custom Server Locations” listed in a drop-down which are the names you were asked to use when you first created a Location for a Shared Review. Select the one you want to remove, then press the “Remove Server Profile” button.

You can now return to the “Send for Review” wizard and recreate the profile for your Shared Review location.

Now if you would like to change the location of your home to a place in your favorite spot in the world, you are on your own….

The first thing you will need to do is convert the individual documents to PDF files first (if they are not already). Then enable them for Shared Review or Email-Based Review as necesary. Keep those files handy somewhere as your copy if you wish to.

Then combine all those files in to a PDF Portfolio. You can find lots of instructions to do that online and elsewhere, if you haven’t created one yourself yet.

The important thing here is that PDF Portfolios preserve all the settings of the original PDF files, including their Review and Collaboration settings. All the recipients (the reviewers in this case) need to do is view the files in the PDF document as they would normally do, and the Comment and Markup toolbar and Shared Review buttons will appear too. As Shared Reviews also enable for commenting in the free Adobe Reader, this will work there too.

Note that if reviewers do not see the Comment & Markup toolbar they will need to click the “Open” button in the Portfolio toolbar to open the document fully in Acrobat or Reader 9. One trick that might work is for you, as the initiator, to make sure your own Comment & Markup toolbar is open when you create the Shared Review/Email-Based Review for each document.