The Same Page

In Part 1 of this article, I wrote about exporting comments in a Microsoft Word document to a PDF file with comments when using Acrobat PDFMaker. When converting Microsoft Office files to PDF documents it is important, possibly even critical, to preserve as much information from the source as possible, and to have the option to be selective about it: Acrobat PDFMaker can help you there.

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.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another good question came through recently. It just happened to be a topic that I did not get a chance to cover at my "Review and Commenting" eSeminar for AcrobatUsers.com.

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

Continue reading "How Do I Use The Migrate Comments Command?" »

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When you think of Microsoft SharePoint, you might typically think of collaboration in the context of document management, wikis, blogs, status updates, team calendars, and so on. Well, what about document reviews? Yes, you collaborate using documents too. Rather then me explaining it all here, I have created a couple of tutorial videos and posted them on the Acrobat channel on Adobe TV and the tutorials section of AcrobatUsers.com. You can also watch them below...

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.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Technical Evangelist Joel Geraci recently posted an article, video and a "kit" for Acrobat 9 deployment. He has included the Adobe Customization Wizard 9, which allows IT managers to set default configurations for both Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9 on Windows prior to deployment, including document collaboration settings.

This includes setting the following collaboration and commenting features for all users whom the customized installer is deployed to:

• Disabling all Acrobat.com features, for those in a locked-down environment where users cannot post any data to an external server
• Disable only specific Acrobat.com features, such as the ability to initiate of Shared Reviews; initiation of live collaboration and screen sharing; the 'Go to Acrobat.com' menu item; sharing documents via Acrobat.com; and Buzzword document creation
• Add preconfigured network folder, web server folder (WebDAV) or Microsoft SharePoint Workspace servers locations for Shared Reviews
• Add custom or browser-based online comment repositories for legacy workflows
• Changing the default file types that can be attached to PDF documents (for security purposes)

There are a whole host of other settings that can be preconfigured using this tool, including a direct MSI installation table editor and a Registry key tool, so check out Joel's blog or go to the Adobe Customization Wizard 9 page here for more information, including a link to download it (it's free, by the way). Documentation on deploying Acrobat and Reader can also be obtained from the Adobe Developer Connection.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was recently asked by someone "How do I change the settings for an existing Shared Review location? The server folder I use for collecting comments has changed." This is fairly straightforward to do...

Continue reading "Modifying Shared Review Locations" »

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Review Tracker is your friend. It keeps an eye on the reviews (and forms) you have either sent out or received so that you can carry on doing your day job. But because it does this in the background, there may be times when it (or the Finder or Windows Explorer) prompts you to log in to a server that you are no longer connected to. There is one way to stop that from happening.

Continue reading "How Do I Stop Acrobat 9 Checking for Comments?" »

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Or so someone once said. Another person also said that "there are no shortcuts to Life's greatest achievements." Well, getting everyone's feedback on time and easily so I can achieve my writing goals and deadlines is an achievement for me, and I use some shortcuts - of the keyboarding kind, that is. Here are some you can use right away with the commenting tools in Acrobat or Reader (when the document is enabled for commenting).

Continue reading ""A shortcut is the longest distance between two points."" »

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Shared Reviews introduced in Acrobat 8 are invaluable for those who need to get feedback on documents from others that are not part of their company or organization. As the document is enabled for commenting in the free Adobe Reader, you won't have to take out a second mortgage to buy everyone you need to work with a copy of Acrobat 8, just for the purposes of the review of a single document.

However, if you were working with external reviewers in a Shared Review in Acrobat 8, a WebDAV server was typically required as the repository for collecting those comments from others (the other option is to use a Network Folder, but those aren't typically made available outside the firewall). For many small business or workgroups, setting up a WebDAV server may not be a viable option - you have a day job to worry about, or the servers are looked after by others in a different location.

Well, Acrobat 9 addresses that particular problem, especially for those who don't have an IT resource that is just a phone call or stones throw away: Acrobat 9 can now use Acrobat.com servers as the repository to collect comments for Shared Reviews.

To use it in Acrobat 9 is straightforward. Just initiate a Shared Review as you normally would from the Comments taskbar button or menu, but in the Send for Shared Review wizard choose "...with Acrobat.com" as the location to collect comments from reviewers.

Once you've signed in with your free Adobe ID, you can just tell Acrobat 9 who you want to invite, what the deadline for the review is, and Acrobat 9 takes care of uploading the PDF document securely to your Share library on Acrobat.com for others to access. Your reviewers will get a link to download the document via an email from Acrobat.com.

From then on it works just like any other Shared Review. But there is one additional benefit...because you are using Acrobat.com, you can also turn on Page View Sharing (aka Send and Collaborate Live). Now you can also see who else is reviewing the document whilst seeing the comments they add, as well as the view of the page. Rad!

It's important to note that using Acrobat.com for Shared Reviews only works with Acrobat 9. If you have initiated the Shared Review with Acrobat.com from Acrobat 9 Pro or Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, the document will also be enabled for commenting in the free Adobe Reader - again, version 9 only in this case.

Now those of you in small businesses, or working from home, or in a department without technical resources, can scratch off "IT Manager" from the list of tasks you have to do in addition to your regular day job. Unfortunately, we can't help with the plumbing problems you have.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 6:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, here's the next area of Acrobat 9's new collaboration features I'm really excited about...the ability to comment directly on video. But it's more than just adding a sticky note to an embedded video clip...

Acrobat 9 will tie the comment or markup you add to the video to a frame and write the timecode in to the text pop-up.

Then, you click on a comment in the Comments pane at the bottom of the document window and jump back to that particular frame. To see it in action, click here to view a video tutorial.

Here's why I am excited about this capability...

1. You can use the same tools and methodologies you use already for text and images in a PDF document - no additional training required.
2. You can enable the PDF for comment, markup and analysis in Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, and Reader 9 users can give their feedback on the video too.
3. You can do exactly the same thing with embedded Flash content and essentially any video clip (that you have the rights to share).
4. You can embed the video with other content - or a bunch of videos in a single file - and make all of it part of a Shared Review, say, as well as secure it to prevent changes or control access.

A few things to keep in mind though. For the Adobe Premiere Pro users reading this right now, this is not the same thing as Clip Notes. That is specifically for Premiere Pro-based workflows. The other important thing is that this is for Acrobat 9 and Reader 9 only, as it uses the new Rich Media Annotation type for embedded video and Flash.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Feedback can never come fast enough, can it? We live in an age where we are overwhelmed with information, yet we still need more of it NOW! If you are that kind of person - whether you want to be or not - then Acrobat 9 has a capability for you: synchronized document views aka page view sharing. It's a capability we are so excited about, we just had to call it by more than one name. ;)

Until you try this for yourself, the only way to really understand it is to see it in a real-world scenario.

Here's a possible one...let's say I'm an architect for a new office building. The project manager at my client's location calls me, and leaves me a voicemail saying "Hey! We have a problem with the plans. Call me when you get this." We've all received those messages before, right? So, you start leaving voicemails or sending emails to each other, never really understanding what the problem is or what to do about it. So frustrating. So unproductive. So 2007.

What I really want to do is to have my customer show me exactly where in the floor plan they have a problem, as if they were standing next to me moving my mouse, rubbing my back (this architect is very close to his clients). Only problem is they are on the other side of the country, and I have a meeting in 15 minutes with Mr. Trump about a major construction project. How can we control the view we have of the document right in Acrobat 9 or Reader 9 without having to go into an online or real meeting room, so I can find out where to make the change quickly and accurately?

This is where synchronized document views comes in. It literally allows you to share your view of a PDF document with up to 2 other friends at the same time. You are actually controlling the view of the PDF file in their installation of Acrobat 9 or Reader 9 (yes, Reader 9 users can participate too).

Here is one way you can get to the command...from the new Collaborate taskbar button in Acrobat 9...

Watch this video to see how it works in action...

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• It uses Acrobat.com In case you missed the news, Acrobat.com is a set of online hosted services from Adobe for sharing and collaboration. It's currently free (and a public beta), but page view sharing uses Acrobat.com's servers to handle the communication between clients. Acrobat.com uses HTTPS and SSL, and the review initiator can control who can download the PDF document. But it is the only server you can use today for synchronized document views.
• You need an Adobe ID to initiate. An Adobe ID is a way to authenticate yourself with Acrobat.com to enabled a document for Page View Sharing in Acrobat 9. If you don't have one yet, you can get one right from within Acrobat 9 or Reader 9: it's free, you sign up once, and the only information you need to provide includes your name, an email address, your password and the country you reside in. However, you do not need an Adobe ID to participate in page view sharing - you can just sign in as a guest.
• You need Acrobat 9 to initiate. But you can participate in page view sharing using only Reader 9. It's not available in previous versions of either application. But you'll upgrade, right?!
• It works with 3D content. It's all about views. So if one of the participants changes the view of a 3D object in the PDF file, the others see the same 3D view. The implications for the manufacturing and AEC industry are huge for when it comes to rapid collaboration on documents.
• Only three participants at a time. Keep this in mind when distributing your collaboration-enabled documents. Just you and two friends. What you show your friends is up to you...
• It's only for PDF documents in Acrobat 9 or Reader 9. This is not screen sharing. But if you need to share other application views, you can also the select the "Share My Screen..." from the new Collaborate Live panel, or from the Collaborate Taskbar button. This will open your free ConnectNow beta meeting room on Acrobat.com, and invite those two friends to join you in a desktop/application screen sharing session.

Which might bring up a good question...why not just use the screen sharing option that's available? It's a good discussion point, but one reason is that anyone who is participating in page view sharing can quickly and with minimal fuss share the view of the PDF file they have with others. It's a conversation where everyone has a say and can contribute.

I think they call that collaboration, don't they?!

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has to be one of my favorite applications for the annotations in Acrobat 8, but has nothing to do with reviewing documents!

One of the most popular ways to publish and share content in the form of PowerPoint slides is as a PDF file. Makes sense, right? You can secure the file to prevent changes. Everyone sees exactly the same thing. You can include slide transitions and bullet-point animations. And more. But that's all for another time and another blog.

Many presenters, eLearning content authors, and Adobe marketing types like to (always?) put speaker notes with the PowerPoint slides. This is as a guide, for ancillary information, or in the case of those Adobe marketing types, telling everyone else in the company what to say. But converting a PPT to a PDF used to mean that those notes would either be "lost" or have to "printed" to PDF separately. Not any more.

PDFMaker's preferences for PowerPoint on Windows (sorry my Mac brethren) includes an option to "Convert Speaker notes to Text notes in Adobe PDF" under the Setting tab. You can get to this dialog box by either clicking on the "Preferences" button in PowerPoint 2007, or choosing "Change Conversion Settings" from the Adobe PDF menu in PowerPoint 2003 and earlier.

Click OK and the settings will remain for future conversions. Now convert to PDF from PowerPoint using the PDFMaker buttons or the Adobe PDF menu, and take a look at the resulting PDF file in Acrobat.

What you will now see on every page that has speakers notes is a PDF Sticky Note in the top left of that page (my Mac brethren, you can now come back into this conversation). If you hover over that Note or double-click to open its pop-up, lo-and-behold, there are the speakers notes from PowerPoint.

Now those notes will always appear on the page unless you delete or hide them all. The neat thing is that these notes are on a PDF Layer, whose view you can toggle on or off. Open the Layers Panel tab on the left of your Acrobat window and you will see a layer called "Background" and another called "Presentation Notes". Just as you would do in other Adobe creative tools that use layers, click the eye icon to toggle the display of the layers on or off.

By the way, the Background layer will show and hide any background graphics you may have had in your PowerPoint design. That's useful if you want to print the slides but don't want to use up all that expensive ink when printing backgrounds - yes, layer visibility can affect printing too! Look at the detailed "Layer Properties" under the Layers Navigation Panel Options menu button.

It's important to remember: Acrobat is not a replacement for tools like PowerPoint when it comes to creating presentations and eLearning content. However, it's ideal when it comes to being able to share that interesting and engaging content reliably across computers, networks and devices. The ability to then use that content in meaningful ways as a PDF just makes it all the more valuable.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has just occurred to me that I've been writing about commenting and electronic reviews of PDF documents, without sharing with you all the different ways you can actually conduct and tracks reviews with others. Silly me. Unless of course, you'd rather just give feedback to yourself - how constructive.

• Manually email the document. Then add comments, email to the next person or back to the initiator. Old skool methodology. Nothing wrong with it. As long as you don't mind having to deal with multiple files, merging all the comments together yourself, and not having any tracking tools - apart from your email inbox.

• Email-based Reviews. Introduced with Acrobat 7.0, this tracks who you invite to a review by email, and makes it easier to merge comments that are emailed back from reviewers in to your single master document. But the exciting thing about this was that it was the first time Acrobat Professional had the ability to enable the document for commenting and analysis in the free Adobe Reader. Meaning you can work with virtually anyone. Think you have to start buying Acrobat for all those you want to collaborate with electronically? No sir!

• Browser-based Reviews. Actually older than email-based reviews, it was introduced with Acrobat 5.0. Instead of the comments being stored in the PDF file itself, the comments are stored in and tracked from a central shared location: a Network Folder, a SharePoint workspace, a WebDAV folder, or a SOAP repository. The PDF is opened and commented on in a web browser. This way, everyone can see each others comments. It makes review cycles that much quicker as reviewers can add comments in parallel (rather than waiting for an email), and be more efficient as you're not saying the same thing as someone else (unlike some meetings I've been in). The downside is that it requires Acrobat to participate, and some configuration of the reviewers Acrobat preferences (either manually or via an FDF file).

• Shared Reviews. This is my document review method of choice since the introduction of Acrobat 8. It provides all the benefits of Browser-based Reviews in that the comments are stored in a shared location for all the reviewers to see and reply to. But it's much easier to participate in a review. The document is enabled for comment and markup in the free Adobe Reader, meaning virtually anyone can participate: but they work in their browser, in Acrobat, online or offline. Acrobat or Reader will synchronize the comments as soon as you are connected again. For review initiators, Acrobat will track who has responded and how many comments have been added. See my entry on "Why Shared Reviews?" for more details.

• Customized Collaboration Workflows. This is one you won't find an option for in the box. But developers can create their own custom commenting and collaboration workflows and repositories for Acrobat using SOAP. It's based on Browser-based Reviews, and has many additional benefits for developers. Interested? I suggest reading the excellent "Acrobat Online Collaboration: Setup and Administration" guide.

Like the sound of one or more of these workflows? Good! You're about to take a step into a world where review cycles are fast, accurate, efficient and kinda fun. If you want to learn more, check out my video tutorials on Email-based and Shared Reviews.

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)