PDF webinar: super-useful & super-affordable

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This Tuesday (May 22) I'm doing a 1 hour webinar on PDF basics that can help anyone in letal profession who uses PDFs. Whether you have the free Reader program, or full-blown Acrobat you can learn some incredibly useful things, such as how to:

  • Find key words and phrases quickly in a single PDF, or group of PDFs
  • Create searchable comments and highlighting, and edit them to tag key issues
  • Use bookmarks to tag key pages
  • Digitally sign PDFs, and secure them to prevent changes all at once
  • Learn about powerful bates-stamp & redaction tools

The seminar is at 1:30 pm Central time, and if you can save 20% off the $30 cost if you sign up here.

My upcoming PDF book, webinars and seminars.

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For the past few months I’ve been drafting “Acrobat in One Hour for Lawyers,” a book commissioned by the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA to help lawyers figure out how to do more with PDFs.

I squeezed every gob of PDF knowledge the draft I turned in last Monday, and it’s now being peer reviewed by some serious PDF experts. So once it’s published, sometime at the end of the year, it’s going to be an incredible resource for lawyers and their staff.

Meanwhile, now that I’ve heightened my knowledge of PDF use in the practice of law, I’m going to start doing more seminars and webinars to share my new found tips and tricks. For example, in the next few weeks, I’ll be doing the following:

  • 1 hour webinar on PDF basics - no CLE credit; just incredibly useful information on the free Adobe Reader program (tips will help Acrobat users as well). Also, some basic Acrobat skills such as bookmarking and commenting.

  • An intermediate level seminar: Acrobat for Lawyers Boot Camp – 2.5 hours of hands-on CLE in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, June 6th, sponsored by the Chicago Bar Association.

  • An advanced level seminar Acrobat for Lawyers Boot Camp – 2.5 hours of hands-on CLE in Chicago on Friday morning, June 7th, also sponsored by the Chicago Bar Association.

I hope to see some of you at one of those events. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in getting notified when the book is published be sure to sign up here.

Most useful Acrobat Keyboard Shortcuts

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Lawyers who have made the jump to a paperless practice think of PDFs as "digital paper." The key to being super-efficient with PDFs is to learn some basic keyboard shortcuts for the common things you do with them.

I've created a one page cheat-sheet of the most common things I tend to do with PDFs when I'm working with them from day-to-day. Odds are most lawyers would benefit from memorizing these commands as well.

Here's what I recomend you do:

By referring to the cheat-sheet from time to time you'll remind yourself of the key skills you're trying to master. Most of these shortcuts work in Adobe Reader too.

There aren't many times you'll hear me recommend that you print something out, but this is a rare case where doing so will help you learn to use less paper. So, go ahead and print just this one piece of paper. You'll be glad you did!

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Bookmarking briefs the easy way

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Bookmarks are a great way to tag key pages in a multi-page PDF, especially one with a lot of pages. Think of bookmarks as equivalent to sticky notes used on stacks of paper to mark key passages.

The more you use bookmarks, the more you begin to appreciate their power. And so you want to use them more. For example, when I get a memorandum in support of a motion from opposing counsel I immediately create bookmarks for each of the main headings, and the sub-headings. The result looks like the example below.

You'll notice immediately that there is a lot of text in those footnotes, so the obvious question is: doesn't it take a lot of time to create those kinds of bookmarks? And the answer is: no, because if it did I wouldn't do it.

The first step is to learn, memorize, and then completely internalize, the shortcut for creating bookmarks. On a PC the shortcut is CONTROL + B. On a Mac computer it's COMMAND + B. If you invoke that shortcut a bookmark will immediately be created on whatever page your on, and in whatever level of zoom you're at.

That's great for creating the bookmark, but what about getting all that text to match the headers and sub-headers? For this you need, first, for the PDF to be 'text searchable,' which these days it usually is. A PDF that was created from a word processing document and then e-filed will be text searchable in 99% of the cases. Second, you need to know how to select text. For this you need the "selection tool" depicted in the graphic below.

Using the selection tool you simply select the text you want to create a bookmark from. Once it's selected you hit the shortcut described above (e.g. Command/Control + B) and, voilá, you will have created a bookmark that has the header text. With this method it takes only a minute or two to create a set of bookmarks that essentially serve as a table of contents for your brief.

If you would like to get these kinds of tips delivered by email subscribe to our newsletter.

A new web host for this site: good news on the way.

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The webhost of this site has been moved to Squarespace, and hopefully there will be no disruption of the RSS feed or Email newsletter. The website looks a little different, but the main reason for the switch was to make it easier to post updates. I'm writing a book for the American Bar Association called "Acrobat in One Hour for Lawyers," which should be due out later this year (probably in the Fall). So, I plan to update more often to cover some of the things I'll be talking about in the book.

Adobe Annoyances: Acrobat Pro XI on Mac forgets the default printer

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Apparently one of our readers discovered that when he updated to the new Acrobat Pro XI the program lost track of his designated default printer. Now, Acrobat seems to present his printer options in alphabetical order, rather than the one he has chosen as his default printer. This issue was reported on the Adobe Community forum, and a response from an Adobe team member acknowledge that it was "a genuine issue" and they have logged a bug report. So presumably this annoyance is more of a bug, and it will hopefully be corrected soon.

If you have any annoyances, let us know by emailing me at esvenson@gmail.com. We're looking more for UI problems, than for bugs, but we appreciate any feedback to help make Acrobat better.

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Adobe Annoyances: creating links is cumbersome

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Aaron Krigelski an Acrobat power user who runs Strutlegal, a company that helps lawyers create electronic briefs has great experience using Acrobat through many of the versions, going back at least as far as Acrobat 4. He offers the following as an annoyance that troubles him in the later versions of Acrobat.

Creating links

"Going old school, Acrobat 4 had the best linking feature. As shown in this video, after selecting the link tool, you would draw the link box, go to the page, or page in another file, and set the link. If you wanted to make a link box around text, you just held down control and selected the text and followed the same steps as before. In Acrobat X, creating links, especially links that go around text, the process is more involved. If you want the link to go around text you don't use the link tool, you use the "Selection Tool for text and images". Then right click, select create link, select the type of link you want, then go to the target, and finally, set your link. It's more or less gone from 1 click to create a link, to 3, including a right mouse click if you are using a PC.

 

Now fixing a link is a whole other story. When I have to edit a link it is usually to redirect a link to a specific part of the page. Sometimes the client will want the link directed to the bottom of the page rather than the top. In Acrobat 4, I would select the link tool, double click on the link which would then let me edit the link. I would say edit link and it would take me to where the link was directed currently. All I would have to do is page down and set the link. If I wanted to do the same thing in Acrobat X, it is so confusing I am better off deleting the old link and creating the new link from scratch.

 

I have had this issue with creating links ever since Acrobat 6 and I have sent an e-mail to their customer support and feature request teams each version since."

 

We'll see if Aaron's annoyance gets addressed in future versions of Acrobat. If you have any annoyances, let us know by emailing me at esvenson@gmail.com. We're looking more for UI problems, than for bugs, but we appreciate any feedback to help make Acrobat better.

Meanwhile, do any of you have issues with how Acrobat handles linking?

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Annoying PDF problems - a new regular blog post

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I have tried many different programs for viewing or manipulating PDFs, but in the end I always stick with Adobe Acrobat. It's not cheap, and its rich feature set make it daunting for new users. There are some things about Acrobat that annoy veteran users, including me. It occurs to me that perhaps if I start posting some of my frustrations it will prompt others to share their annoyances as well.

The goal is not to mindlessly rant, but to collect feedback in an open, transparent way. Perhaps Adobe will take note and then fix some of these annoyances (especially the ones that many users agree are a problem) in future versions of Acrobat. I think software companies are under pressure to create new versions each year or two, and, with mature products like Acrobat, they run out of useful ideas for improving the program and do silly things instead.

Adobe massively changed their user interface in version 10 (also called Acrobat X, so they also changed their naming convention for the product itself, which is also annoying). The new user interface was supposed to help new users figure out the program. I don't know if the new interface helped new users, but I know it annoyed the hell out of experienced users. In fact, I don't know one person who thinks that the UI that emerged out of Acrobat X was helpful.

So, I'm throwing down the gauntlet: if you have a pet peeve about Acrobat and would like to share it let me know by emailing me at esvenson@gmail.com. I am more interested in hearing from loyal Acrobat users who use the software extensively but have a few things that annoy them. I'm not interested in generalized bashing of Adobe or Acrobat.

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Which PDF apps should you use on an iPhone or iPad?

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One thing we haven’t covered much here are the various iPhone and iPad apps that lawyers might use to read, annotate, and otherwise manipulate PDFs. Partly that’s because there have been so many such apps trickling out. And partly it’s because, even the ones that have come to be recognized as dominate, are tricky for newbies to figure out. And there are a lot of newbies with iPhones and iPads.

One excellent application is the one created by Smile Software, which is called PDFPen. Actually, there are two apps: PDFPen for the iPhone (currently selling for $1.99, which is a discount off the usual $4.99 price), and the other is PDFPen for the iPad (currently $6.99; usually $$14.99). If you haven’t yet discovered an optimal tool for working with your PDFs on your iPhone and/or iPad, download these apps now. They’ll never be cheaper and I’m about to give you an outstanding tip on how you can learn to use these apps to their maximum.

David Sparks, an attorney in Los Angeles knows a lot about Apple products and does an incredible job of explaining to average folks how to use things like iOS apps. He has a great podcast that he does with another attorney, Katie Floyd, called MacPowerUsers. It’s not focused on the law at all, but if you’re an attorney using Macs then you should start listening to the podcast, or at least comb through the old ones for topics that apply to stuff you do with your iPad. You should also get a copy of David’s book iPad at Work, available in print or from the Apple iBook store.

Here’s what you really need to get, though, and this is totally free. If you get either one of those PDFPen apps you need to check out his two video tutorials on how to setup, and how to use, those apps. It’s not law-focused, but he’s a lawyer and he uses those tools in his practice. So it’s pretty much the same as if it was law-focused.

If you use PDFs extensively, and if you have an iPhone or iPad, you need (1) a good tool to work with PDFs on the go, and (2) some excellent training on how to use those tools. Now you know about where to get both, and at most it will cost you $9 (if you act soon, and $20, if you wait). Get the PDFPen apps, and watch David’s videos:

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Adobe announces Acrobat XI

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Adobe announced today that it will soon be releasing Adobe Acrobat XI, which like previous versions of Acrobat will come in two flavors: Standard and Professional. Adobe is also going to be releasing version XI of its Adobe Reader program. The main focus of the new Acrobat program is on mobile devices, and cloud services such as Adobe’s EchoSign and FormsCentral services.z

  • Better editing of PDF files, including the ability to modify entire paragraphs and replace images. Also, greater ability to change fonts and alter type styles.
  • The ability to save PDF documents as PowerPoint files (prior versions of Acrobat allowed PDF files to be saved as Word or Excel files).
  • Better handling of electronic signatures, especially the integration with Adobe’s EchoSign service. Mobile devices such as iPads will be able to be used to sign documents in a way that integrates with EchoSign.
  • The ability to merge and arrange different file types into one organized PDF file, and then manipulate content within each file.
  • More robust form transmission and collection (and analysis) using Adobe FormsCentral service.
  • The ability to work with PDF files using touch gestures on tablets and mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone devices.
  • Better integration with Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint.
  • The ability to host Acrobat XI and Reader XI as virtual applications with “touch mode interface” in a Citrix environment.

The new products are expected to ship within 30 days, and be available through Adobe authorized resellers. The list price for Acrobat XI Standard will be $299 ($139 for an upgrade), and Acrobat XI Professional will be $449 ($199 for an upgrade).

Adobe’s EchoSign and FormsCentral services each costs $14.95 per month.

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How to reduce the size of a PDF (useful for email attachments)

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Reducing the file size of a PDF can be useful in many instances, but especially when you’re sending a PDF by email and are faced with limitations on the size of attachments. These days it’s safe to assume that a file of 10 MBs or less will not have trouble making it to an email recipient, but the best practice is to reduce the file size of a PDF as much as possible before sending it via email.

 

To reduce the file size of a PDF go to the FILE menu and choose SAVE AS and then you’ll see the choice REDUCED SIZE PDF… as depicted in the screenshot below (click on any screenshot to enlarge it):

 

2012 07 18 Screenshot 1

 

The menu choices described above work in Adobe Acrobat X and higher. In earlier versions the option could be selected much more easily, by simply choosing FILE > REDUCE FILE SIZE.

 

After you’ve chosen to reduce the file size you’ll be presented with a dialogue box like the one below, which asks you to specify how compatible you want the resulting file to be. 

 

2012 07 18 Screenshot 4

 

That is, do you want the file to be compatible with very old version of Acrobat, or only the more recent versions. If you select the default, which is “retain existing,” then the compatibility of the PDF will be retained. What’s the current compatibility? There’s no easy way to tell, and so I wouldn’t fret about it. Just leave it on the default setting and see how much smaller the file size turns out to be. 

 

To determine how much reduction took place you need to ascertain the file size before you perform the reduction, and then measure it after you reduce. To examine File Size of the current PDF go to the menu FILE > PROPERTIES and then you’ll be presented with the dialogue box below:

 

2012 07 18 Screenshot 5

 

Note the file size before you do the reduction, and then go back and check after you’ve done the reduction. In fact, I’d recommend learning the keyboard command to quickly take you to this dialogue box. On a Windows computer it’s CONTROL + D, and on a Mac it’s COMMAND + D.

 

That dialogue box also allows you to view security settings, and define the Initial View of the PDF, both very useful things to know how to do.

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"True" Digital Signatures are not ready for Prime Time

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Adobe Acrobat lets you create true digital signatures, which most lawyers would love to be able to use. Most lawyers want this feature, not because they understand much about digital signatures, but because they like the word "true." They figure it must be better than a "less than true." What's a "less than true" digital signature? A simple stamp made from a scan of your signature isn't a true digital signature. But it's useful.

The stamp feature is useful because it lets people believe you actually scrawled on paper with a pen. The stamp saves you from having to print out the document to scrawl, only to have to scan it back in. In other words, it is every bit as good as a paper signature. It looks like a paper signature and people never question it. Having people never question your signature is useful in most situations.

A true digital signature, on the other hand, has more security than a purely paper based version. If you think this is automatically good, read on.

You can make your digital signature have a stamp, which fulfills the need to make people believe you scrawled on paper. But when a recipient opens up a PDF that's been signed with a "true digital signature" the program starts asking questions. It wants to know: is this a signature I have in my database of valid signatures? If it isn't then you'll see something like the screenshot below. You can click on the screenshot to enlarge it, in which case you'll see that it says "at least one signature has problems." That's the "true digital signature" that they're talking about.

2012_06_20 Screenshot-1

The people who want you to believe that true digital signatures are highly prized will say "well you can right click on the signature warning and choose to 'validate' the signature." Yeah, you can do that. And that's what I did for the signature above. The next screenshot shows the dialogue box that I was presented with.

2012_06_20 Screenshot

You'd think that by simply clicking that button you'd be telling Acrobat "this is a valid signature, please remove all warnings and go back to 'mall cop mode.'"

But no, that's not what happened when I clicked it. The clicking did nothing. I kept clicking and nothing happened. The warnings remained, and so did the dialogue box. If that's the result of creating a "true digital signature" I want no part of it.

I'm sure I could research the vast array of information about digital signatures and figure out how to solve this problem. But most lawyers won't do that. So until the average person can accept a true digital signature they're not ready for Prime Time. Until then, I'll be stamping my documents with a plain old stamp, and my documents will never be questioned by a poorly implemented computer algorithm. Now that's useful.

To read prior posts about about digital signatures, click here.

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How to highlight PDFs using Adobe's free Reader program

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A reader emailed to ask how to highlight text in Adobe Reader. It used to be that you couldn't do this in the free Reader program. But now you can! Here's how you do it. First, you'll need to have the latest version of Adobe Reader, which is Adobe Reader X. (If you don't have it then you can download it from here). Then follow these steps, which are also depicted in the screenshot below.
  1. Click the COMMENT tab, then
  2. Click the HIGHTLIGHT TEXT choice
  3. Drag your mouse across the area that you want to highlight.
CAVEAT: this won't work on a PDF that hasn't been made text searchable. Reader won't OCR (or render a PDF "text searchable"). You need the full version of Acrobat to do this, or some other program. Adobe Reader hightlight
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To go paperless with a Mac or iPad get this book

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If you use a Mac you probably have an iPad. And probably, like many people with iPads, you're thinking it'd be nice to be paperless. If so, then you need to order a copy of David Sparks new book (Paperless: The MacSparky Field Guide) right now. It's available in the iBook Store for $4.99.

The book is a deep dive on paperless workflows for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The book includes screenshots, interactive images, and short movies. Not only does this book tell you how to go paperless, it also shows you. Trust me, you can do a lot with this book. I can't believe it only costs $5.

(Oh, and it's a large file so don't panic if it takes a little longer than usual to download).

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Which PDF app on the iPad is the best?

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Those of us who have iPads want to know: which PDF app is best? Some apps came out quick and were adopted quickly; some came out later but seem to be gaining traction. Attorney Tom Mighell has written a great book on iPad use for lawyers and he now has put out a great blog post on this topic. Go read it, and if you have a favorite PDF app then chime in with a comment to his post (there's a good thread already going).

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Important Acrobat Preference setting: enable copy text for comments

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I found out about this tip recently from David Masters (author of The Lawyers Guide to Adobe Acrobat). You want to go to your preferences in Acrobat and enable this immediately. The screenshot below (click on it to enlarge the view) shows what you need to switch on.

Preferences

I also created a 4 minute video that demonstrates how to enable the preference, and also shows why the preference is useful. I don't know why Adobe didn't enable this preference by default. Certainly every lawyer or legal professional is going to want this as the default.

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Some proposed language for an engagement letter that allows you to be a paperless lawyer

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I include the following paragraphs in my client engagement letter. The first two relate to retaining files, the first to make it clear that I don’t keep any unnecessary paper (which is most paper). The second is about digital signatures, to make it perfectly clear that no ‘wet ink’ signature will be needed to prove the client agreement.

I find that these two provisions set the proper tone (e.g. I'm serious about not keeping paper). I always call attention to these provisions, and have found that most clients express admiration for my ability to work without relying on paper. Even if you’re not yet paperless, I’d update your engagement letter to allow for paperless storage as opposed to paper, so that when you do start scanning you won’t be worried about whether you have to keep paper files.

Retention of Files My policy is to scan and otherwise digitize all file materials, and to use and retain as little paper as possible. I therefore ask that if you, for some reason, require that paper files be kept that you notify me of that requirement at the outset (i.e. before you sign this agreement) so that I decide whether to accept representation of you in this matter.

After my representation is over I will gladly provide you with a CD-ROM or other digital storage device that contains all of your information in digital form. No guarantees are made that client files will be retained for more than 3 years after the representation is terminated. Again, I keep no paper except for documents that absolutely require paper originals (e.g. promissory notes and wills).

Electronic Signatures and Copies All parties to this agreement agree that a digital signature shall be effective to prove each party’s agreement to the terms of this document. Furthermore, the parties agree that the terms of this Agreement may be proved through an electronic facsimile, including a scanned electronic copy in Portable Document Format (“PDF”) or other digital format, and that no “original” hard-copy document shall be retained to prove the terms of this Agreement.

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