Adobe Acrobat X
Overview
Adobe Acrobat saves files into Portable Document Format (PDF). PDFs can be opened by anyone who has Adobe Reader installed on their computer, they do not need to purchase Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Reader is available from the Install Software icon on CSU computer desktops and for non CSU computers it can be downloaded and installed for free from the Adobe website. Those with iPads, iPhones and Androids can also view PDFs by downloading the Adobe Reader mobile app from the Adobe website.
Adobe Acrobat is powerful software with a lot of capabilities. It can be used to
- create PDFs from any application you can print from
- save PDF's as other file formats (eg Word, HTML, XML, JPEG - called exporting to other file formats)
- create forms and digital signatures
- create portfolios by combining multiple file types into one PDF (eg Word, PowerPoint and Excel)
- compare versions of PDFs (automatically highlights differences between 2 versions of a document)
- create accessible PDFs for people with blindness and low vision
PDF's have a number of benefits compared to the original files they were created from
- printing exactly as expected every time, other documents often do not print the same as they appear on screen
- having a smaller file size than the original making it quicker to open/save from the Internet and email to external colleagues
- platform independent - can be created on a Mac but opened on a computer with Windows and Adobe Reader (and vice versa)
- security - setup password protection to restrict access and different levels of security to prevent people from printing, changing and copying it