Recently, I was asked by a client to edit (mark up or annotate; although these terms are often used interchangeably, there is a distinction which will be made clear a little later) a PDF document, and it looked as though many more such jobs would be assigned to me in the future. In the distant past, I had edited PDFs regularly, becoming quite proficient at it. I located the notes I'd made then on PDF editing, and opened a sample PDF in the free Acrobat Reader (this was Acrobat DC Reader until recently; "DC" has now been dropped) to exercise my rusty skills.
I got a nasty shock: nothing in my notes corresponded to what I saw on my screen! After struggling with my notes and the user interface for some time, I realized that Adobe had changed the user interface of the Reader. It looked completely different. I was annoyed, because the last thing an editor needs is a sudden change in the user interface of a vital software tool he has come to know well.
That is why I've purchased the stand-alone Office 2019; it ensures a stable user interface. However, recently, while editing a Word document, a deadline looming over me, the comments suddenly disappeared. A little investigation revealed the cause: Word 2019 had somehow become Word 365, and what I was seeing was the dreaded modern comments. Googling showed me how to get the bubble comments back, but I was furious: why had Microsoft changed my Word 2019 to Word 365 when I had checked the "Do not update Office" setting? The company had not respected the boundary mandated by a setting in its own software. After the deadline was met, I had to uninstall Office 365 in order to re-install Office 2019. Thankfully, my macros and other customizations were not disturbed. I then disabled Windows Update on my laptop, because I'm sure the "upgrade" from Office 2019 to Office 365 occurred during a recent Windows update.
I pushed these thoughts away; there was work to be done with Reader. I tried watching videos on editing PDF documents, but couldn't concentrate on them. My thoughts kept drifting to how easy PDF editing had been. With practice, I had almost got it down to a science. A little digging on the Net turned up a startling piece of information: it was possible to switch back to the old user interface! I did so and was delighted: my old notes made sense now! If you have the new interface in your Adobe Reader installation, please disable it by clicking on the three lines at the upper-left corner and choosing "Disable New Acrobat".
Acrobat says that the option to switch between the old and new interfaces will be available for now. This is like a Damocles sword hanging over users' heads: the company can remove this option whenever it wants to. The new interface was launched in 2022, so in the past three years, it has not been removed. This is probably because most users hate the new interface — and the company knows it. Users were not shy about venting their feelings when they were ambushed by the new interface in 2022. Their experience was similar to mine with Word 2019: one fine day, they fired up Reader and found to their horror that everything had changed. There was no prior information that a new user interface would be rolled out. Why do reputed companies have to steal into our workspace like a thief in the night and turn a well-established user interface upside down?
Should you stay with the new GUI if you're new to Acrobat Reader? The short answer is no. In the old interface, to insert a word, all you need to do is click on the point of insertion and type the word. I've come across anecdotal evidence that this is not the case in the new GUI: you'll need to right-click to access the Insert Word option or you'll have to access it from the main menu. I'm unable to confirm this because I do not wish to disturb my hard-won working setup by switching to the new GUI. I know nothing should happen and that I should be able to return to the old GUI and find everything as it was before, but I'm not taking any chances.
With the GUI issue out of the way, let's move on to the nitty-gritty of editing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat DC. I must first mention that we will not really be editing PDFs; we'll only be marking them up, i.e., annotating them. The underlying PDF will not change. For that functionality, you'll need the Pro version of the software. If you're a designer, you'll need the Pro version, but copyeditors will only need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Download the Reader software from https://get.adobe.com/reader/. The download includes a couple of add-ons that you can uncheck from the download page.
In Edit->Preferences:
In the General tab, uncheck "Use single-key accelerators to access tools" (certain keys may not work if this option is checked).
In the Security (Enhanced) tab, in the Sandbox Protections section, uncheck "Enable Protected Mode at start-up" (text may not always be selected correctly if this option is checked).
In the Commenting tab, ensure that "Show comments pane when a PDF with comments is opened" is checked. This pane shows all your annotations (not just comments).
Also in the Commenting tab, uncheck "Always use log-in name for author name". Now, as we will see later, you can use a name other than your computer log-in name for your edits.
In the Spelling tab, remove the dictionaries you won't need for the current job.
To begin editing the PDF, click on Tools->Comment. The commenting tools will now be visible in a separate Comment pane.
Adobe's implementation of the editing tools is exemplary. You can work exactly as in MS Word, directly operating on the text:
To insert text, click on the point of insertion and type; the typed text will be inserted at the point of insertion.
To replace text, select the text to be replaced and start typing. The selected text will be struck through and the typed text inserted.
To delete text, select the text to be deleted and press the Delete key; the selected text will be struck through.
To copy/move text, select the text and press Ctrl-C/Ctrl-X; click on the point of insertion and type Ctrl-V. The selected text will be copied/moved.
To insert a comment, click on the Sticky Note tool or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-6. A sticky note will appear in the middle of the screen. Drag it to the left-hand margin, which is where I place all my comments. Now for a couple of adjustments. First, in the Commenting Pane on the right-hand side of the document, click on the three dots in the upper-right corner of the sticky note:
Now click Properties. In the Appearance tab (which is where you should be), change the color to a dark color so that the comment will stand out in the document. You can see that I have selected dark purple. The default color was yellow, which is easy to miss.
Next, click the General tab. Here you can change the author name to whatever you wish. Ensure that you check the "Make Properties Default" option (at the bottom). Reader will then use this author name always in the future.
Comments are not attached to the text, so you'll have to place the comment close to the text the comment refers to and also explicitly refer to the text in the comment. This is a minor annoyance. Also, note that if you click the comment in the left margin, the corresponding comment in the Comment Pane is selected (a blue border appears around it) — and vice versa. This is helpful when you're reviewing a page full of comments. To delete a comment (or annotation), right-click it and click Delete. To edit a comment (or annotation), double-click it. To format a comment, select it and right-click. The following options are available:
These formatting options (note the keyboard shortcuts) are also available when you select text in any annotation, enabling, for example, the following self-explanatory edit:
Something that used to annoy me a lot when editing PDFs is that after typing in my annotation, pressing the Enter key did not save the annotation and take me back to the document; it merely added a line inside the annotation box. How could I exit the annotation box gracefully? Hitting the Esc key only saves the first letter of the text you typed inside the annotation box (in this case, "v", as you can see below).
I later discovered a couple of methods to jump out of the box like a true acrobat:
Press Ctrl-S. This will save the document, exit the annotation box, and return you to the main document.
Simply click anywhere inside the main document. The annotation box will close, and you will be returned to the main document.
Sometimes you may need to compare two PDFs. For example, after proofreading a PDF, I will later need to compare the proofread PDF with the designed PDF. A dual monitor setup (which I have) is very handy in such a situation. Here, I open the proofread PDF in the top monitor and the designed PDF in the bottom monitor, after which I can easily check if my proofreading corrections have been correctly implemented in the designed PDF. To do this, first open the proofread PDF and then the designed PDF, which will appear in separate tabs (or they could appear in separate windows, in which case all you need to do is move the window containing the Designed PDF to the bottom monitor; see the next paragraph for an explanation of why a PDF may appear in a tab or in its own window). Move to the tab containing the Designed PDF. In the top menu of the Reader, click Windows->Open New Window. The Designed PDF will open in a new window. Move this new window to the bottom monitor. Now the comparison between the Proofread and Designed PDFs is easy. Without this dual monitor setup, I'd have to switch from tab to tab (or from window to window) when comparing the PDFs.
Finally, a bonus option for you, dear reader. Would you rather have two or more PDFs opened in tabs of Reader (in browser style) or in separate windows? In Edit->Preferences, under General, if the option is "Open documents as new tabs in the same window (requires relaunch)" is checked, PDFs will be opened in tabs, as in a browser. If this option is unchecked, PDFs will be opened in separate windows.
This guide should give you a good start in marking up PDFs. Watch videos on this subject to enhance the basic know-how given here. Given this foundation and experience (an essential ingredient), you will be able to glide through your PDF editing jobs as smoothly as the trapeze artist in the header photo.
Comments