PDF for Lawyers

Going paperless at home

The New York Times has an interesting article about the mounting trend of people digitizing their home information. Over at the Lifehacker blog the editors have asked their readers how far they've come in digitizing their home information. Some interesting comments there, and I encourage those of you who are interested in the "Paperless Evolution" to read those comments or add your own.

Controversy over the "Send to FedEx" feature in Acrobat

Last week we reported on the "Send to FedEx/Kinkos" function in Acrobat 8.1.  Now it appears that, because of complaints by printing organizations, Adobe and FedEx will no longer partner to offer this feature.  In October, when Adobe releases new versions of Acrobat and Reader, the 'Send to FedEx/Kinkos" link will be removed, although a separate version of Reader will be available from FedEx that will contain this functionality.  Hopefully, FedEx/Kinkos will also create a plug-in for Acrobat that enables the "Send to" feature.

Upcoming seminar on Acrobat - How to create forms

Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton putting on a free online seminar what will demonstrate the best ways of creating and using PDF Forms in the legal world.   The one hour seminar will focus on Acrobat 8, but most of the features will also work in Acrobat 7.  For more information about this August 9th event click here.

Proving PDF documents in court

Dunno if this is helpful, but someone asked this question on Google Answers and here is the resulting response.

Securing PDFs - free webinar this Thursday

If you are interested in learning how to secure your PDFs, you should seriously consider signing up for this one hour webinar put on by Adobe.  It's called "Securing Legal Documents & Information" and its free if you are registered with Adobe.  Expert Acrobat instructors Rick Borstein and Bryant Bell and will cover common questions such as these:

• How do I keep the recipient from copying text or printing a PDF?
• How can I password protect a PDF?
• How do I ensure that only the intended recipient can open a PDF?
• How do I revoke a PDF, even after it has been renamed, copied to a thumbdrive or sent outside my firewall?
• How can I find out if a PDF is genuine and hasn't been tampered with?
• How do I ensure that the PDF I need to send does not contain dangerous metadata?

The webinar is this coming Thursday from noon to 1 pm CST.  To sign up or find out more about the program, click here.

How To Create a PDF of an Entire Website

In a recent post I talked about how to use Internet Explorer and Acrobat to download pages one at a time. Acrobat can do much, much more. There are times when you may want to get more than just a page, and ever since Acrobat 4, there has been a simple way to gather up entire websites.

The "Create PDF from web page" button is just the surface. I'll try to give you a flavor of what is possible, and why you might want to try it.

Why would you want to PDF an entire website? (Yes, I used "to PDF" as a verb. That seems like it has become common usage.) You may be doing research on a company for a takeover bid. The work requires you to spend many hours studying the company, but you don't want their network logs showing your IP address snooping around at all hours of the day and night. Or perhaps you want to preserve a website as evidence of how things looked on a certain day and time. Or to archive your own firm's website as a backup or "wayback machine." Perhaps you've found a site with lots of amazing material that you would like to keep available for quick reference, but you're not always online, the site doesn't have search capability, and you want to have it available and make notes on it.

In Acrobat, there are a couple of ways to get to the command that allows you to capture all or part of a website. On the Tasks toolbar is a button entitled "Create PDF." By clicking on that button, you will see that one of your options is "From Web Page." You can also use the File menu under "Create PDF." There are other commands under the Advanced menu > Web Capture. You use the Web Capture commands to make changes to an existing PDF.

This is one of those "iceberg" features in Acrobat. Like most of the dialogs in Acrobat, this deceptively simple interface puts a lot of power in your hands. Use it carefully . . .

Start by entering the web address in the address box. (It is easiest to just copy and paste it from the address bar of your browser.) The next step is to decide how much of the website you want.

How much you gather is determined by setting the "levels". Take a look at the links on your selected page -- they should be visible in the web browser as underlined or highlighted words, or perhaps as images or icons. Level 1 means you will collect only the page you are on. Level 2 gathers all the pages that are linked directly from the page you are on. Level 3 includes all the pages from second level pages, and so on. There is a checkbox for "get entire site." That's pretty self explanatory, but beware that some sites are HUGE. You can find your machine tied up for several minutes and choking on a 2000 page PDF. That may be exactly what you want. If it is, just be prepared for it to take awhile.

A webpage may have many links to other pages that are not part of the same website. You may or may not be interested in gathering all of those pages. You can control off-site links using the "stay on same path" and/or "stay on same server" checkboxes.

Use the "Settings" button to set up even more goodness using the PDF Settings boxes. Acrobat can organize the site for navigation, and even check sites for changes.

Websites are organized hierarchically, which makes it handy for Acrobat to create a Bookmark for every page. If you check the "Save refresh commands" box, you can check for updates and changes to a site, using the Web Capture tools under the Advanced menu.

In addition, the hyperlinks in your new PDF should work just as they do in your browser. If the link goes to a page you downloaded, it will link locally to the PDF page on your machine. If the link is to a webpage that you did not download (for example, it is on another site and you selected "stay on same path," the link is still active, and clicking on it will open it in your web browser.

Next time, I'll discuss how to use a combination of Acrobat's web features to provide a big boost to your legal research on sites like LexisNexis.
~~ Dave

Acrobat Keyboard Shortcuts

Keeps your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel . . .

No matter what application you are using (or in Windows itself) you will save a lot of time and wasted motion if you quit mousing around and learn to activate menu and toolbar commands from the keyboard. The PDF Best Practices page at Microtype.com has links to keyboard shortcuts for Acrobat 5 and 7. (They should work for 6 too.)

Microtype is the company run by Shlomo Perets, who was recently showcased as one of the "Champions of PDF" in a PDFZone series. If you want to get a clear (and not incomprehensibly geeky) view of ways to make your PDFs better, read a couple of his Best Practices articles.

~~ Dave

Using Custom Stamps in Acrobat

Matthew Buchanan at Promote the Progress weblog has a great post about using Adobe Acrobat to create custom stamps.  Here's a snippet of his very informative post:

One of the things I like best about Acrobat is the ability to apply electronic stamps to documents.  These allow you to mark a document in much the same manner as you would with a rubber stamp — “sign here,” “draft,” “confidential,” etc.  The new version of Acrobat Professional makes it even easier to add and organize custom stamps.

Go read the whole thing.

Acrobat For Lawyers - A Great Book

David Masters has written a wonderful book for all you lawyers out there who are trying to figure out how to make better use of Adobe Acrobat in your law practice.  The Lawyer's Guide to Using Adobe Acrobat available from the ABA for $59.00 ($10.00 off if you a member of the ABA Law Practice Mgt Section).

The book provides hands-on examples of how the software provides unique solutions for law firms, along with useful tips and shortcuts. It has step-by-step explanations of the various techniques needed for opening and publishing all types of documents using Adobe Acrobat, including advice on:

    •     Creating PDF Files using five separate techniques
    •     Creating and using navigation aids, including bookmarks and links
    •     Using comments, text boxes, notes and stamps
    •     Creating and managing digital signatures
    •     Extracting content, searching and indexing PDF documents
    •     Managing basic and advanced (certificate) document security
    •     Planning, creating, and organizing E-briefs
    •     Adding and using plug-ins
    •     Using Acrobat in the paperless office

So, what are you waiting for?  Check it out and see if it doesn't make your digital life a little easier.

Creating Links in a PDF file

One of the many unnoticed features of PDF files is that you can create links within a PDF file to do various things. To create links you need the full version of Acrobat, which is a $250 investment. I think it's well worth it, but you'll have to decide for yourself. To see what I'm talking about click on this link to open a sample PDF file that actually explains the power of linking in an interactive way.