The review/comment and fillable forms features of Acrobat 9 can really streamline your workflow. But if, like many individuals and small companies, you don’t have a shared server on which to host the documents you may find yourself trying to use Adobe’s free service Acrobat.com. This may also be the case if your server is for internal access only and you are collaborating with external people.
Currently there are two versions of the Adobe’s set of online services: Acrobat.com, which is free, and the new subscription version—Acrobat.com Premium. In this article I will be discussing only the free version.
Comment and Review—without the frustration
If you are using Acrobat 9 you may have tried using Acrobat.com to send a document for Comment and Review. The advantage of this method is that the PDF document is hosted on Acrobat.com and the reviewers are able to upload and download comments. All the comments end up on one document and the reviewers can see each other’s comments. An additional bonus is that the PDF document is enabled for Reader Commenting so the reviewers are required only to have Reader 9. If you have to gather feedback from other people this is pretty slick!
That is until you start actually working with Acrobat.com. My personal experience has been that Acrobat.com can be maddeningly slow (although to be fair, it’s much faster now than it was in the past) and that the user interface for accessing a review document is just plain confusing. I understand that it’s free, but the last thing I want to do is frustrate and confuse my colleagues and clients. Here’s a technique that allows you to use Acrobat.com but spares your reviewers. They’ll work with an email attachment—something most people are very comfortable using.
Which versions?
You must have Acrobat 9. Your reviewers need Acrobat 9 or Reader 9. Remember, Reader 9 is free. Make sure that your reviewers have downloaded and installed version 9.
Everyone needs an account
Begin by making sure that everyone who is participating in the review has an Acrobat.com account. The free service will work fine for what we are discussing and it’s very easy to sign up.
Send it to yourself
As the initiator, begin in Acrobat 9 with the review document open. Choose Comment > Send for Shared Review. Select the option to “Automatically download & track comments with Acrobat.com”. Click Next and sign in to Acrobat.com. The Send for Shared Review screen will display. Address the message to only yourself. Remember to set a deadline. (I don’t know about you, but a deadline helps to focus my attention.) Click Send. Acrobat will let you know that you have successfully shared the file. You’ll observe a yellow bar at the top of the document with buttons that say Check for New Comments and Publish Comments. The Comment & Markup tool bar will display. Note that the document has a new name: [documentname]_review.pdf. This document lives in the same folder as your original PDF.
Email the review document
Close the review document. Launch your email and compose a message to your reviewers. Be sure to attach the review document to the email ([documentname]_review.pdf). Include the information about the deadline. Do not copy and paste the link from the Acrobat.com message you received—the whole point is to avoid that. Send the message.
Reviewers will work with the attachment
When your reviewers receive your email message they will double-click on the attachment. They will then be prompted to click a Connect button to log in to Acrobat.com. After successfully connecting, they will see a Welcome screen. The yellow bar and the Comment & Markup tool bar will display. At this point the reviewers can get busy adding comments. They’ll need to click the Publish Comments button to upload their comments. To see other people’s comments they can click the Check for New Comments button.
The only interaction the reviewers have with Acrobat.com will be logging in. It’s a bit of extra work for the initiator, but so much more familiar and simple for the reviewers!
But will it work with forms?
Yes! And if you’re a geek like I am, you may find this is even more exciting.
Getting started
Create your interactive form. Before you distribute, pay attention to the location of your form document. I suggest that there may be a benefit to putting the form in its own folder. When you distribute, two additional files will be generated: [documentname]_distributed.pdf and [documentname]_responses.pdf. You will send [documentname]_distributed.pdf to the people you want to have complete the form. Or, and this is the really exciting part, put that file on your web site so that anyone can complete it! (Caveat: remember with all of this they must be using Reader 9 or Acrobat 9.) Your users don’t even need an Acrobat.com account! The responses will be uploaded and you will be able to download them by opening the [documentname]_responses.pdf file.
Distribute
Choose Forms > Distribute Form. Again, choose Acrobat.com as your method and send the message to only yourself. Notice that [documentname]_distributed.pdf and [documentname]_responses.pdf are created in the same folder. Send or post [documentname]_distributed.pdf.
View responses
Acrobat 9 collects the responses into a PDF Package. Simply opening [documentname]_responses.pdf prompts the importing of data. Each response is listed as a separate PDF document within the Package. You can view, filter, and export the data.
Use the Tracker
As the initiator of a review or distributor of a form the Tracker provides you with lots of information and options for managing your reviews and forms. In keeping with the work around, you want to avoid using the Tracker to Add Reviewers. Instead, send them an email with the review document attached.
Everything changes
For now, I like this method better than the workflow suggested by Adobe. But I’ll be keeping my eye out for changes. Acrobat.com already seems faster than when it first launched. Who knows when the interface may be changed to something less confusing? In my experience, Adobe does a good job of regularly improving their products. In the meantime, this technique takes advantage of the best part of Acrobat.com.
Acrobat.com for comment/review and forms distribution
The review/comment and fillable forms features of Acrobat 9 can really streamline your workflow. But if, like many individuals and small companies, you don’t have a shared server on which to host the documents you may find yourself trying to use Adobe’s free service Acrobat.com. This may also be the case if your server is for internal access only and you are collaborating with external people.
Currently there are two versions of the Adobe’s set of online services: Acrobat.com, which is free, and the new subscription version—Acrobat.com Premium. In this article I will be discussing only the free version.
Comment and Review—without the frustration
If you are using Acrobat 9 you may have tried using Acrobat.com to send a document for Comment and Review. The advantage of this method is that the PDF document is hosted on Acrobat.com and the reviewers are able to upload and download comments. All the comments end up on one document and the reviewers can see each other’s comments. An additional bonus is that the PDF document is enabled for Reader Commenting so the reviewers are required only to have Reader 9. If you have to gather feedback from other people this is pretty slick!
That is until you start actually working with Acrobat.com. My personal experience has been that Acrobat.com can be maddeningly slow (although to be fair, it’s much faster now than it was in the past) and that the user interface for accessing a review document is just plain confusing. I understand that it’s free, but the last thing I want to do is frustrate and confuse my colleagues and clients. Here’s a technique that allows you to use Acrobat.com but spares your reviewers. They’ll work with an email attachment—something most people are very comfortable using.
Which versions?
You must have Acrobat 9. Your reviewers need Acrobat 9 or Reader 9. Remember, Reader 9 is free. Make sure that your reviewers have downloaded and installed version 9.
Everyone needs an account
Begin by making sure that everyone who is participating in the review has an Acrobat.com account. The free service will work fine for what we are discussing and it’s very easy to sign up.
Send it to yourself
As the initiator, begin in Acrobat 9 with the review document open. Choose Comment > Send for Shared Review. Select the option to “Automatically download & track comments with Acrobat.com”. Click Next and sign in to Acrobat.com. The Send for Shared Review screen will display. Address the message to only yourself. Remember to set a deadline. (I don’t know about you, but a deadline helps to focus my attention.) Click Send. Acrobat will let you know that you have successfully shared the file. You’ll observe a yellow bar at the top of the document with buttons that say Check for New Comments and Publish Comments. The Comment & Markup tool bar will display. Note that the document has a new name: [documentname]_review.pdf. This document lives in the same folder as your original PDF.
Email the review document
Close the review document. Launch your email and compose a message to your reviewers. Be sure to attach the review document to the email ([documentname]_review.pdf). Include the information about the deadline. Do not copy and paste the link from the Acrobat.com message you received—the whole point is to avoid that. Send the message.
Reviewers will work with the attachment
When your reviewers receive your email message they will double-click on the attachment. They will then be prompted to click a Connect button to log in to Acrobat.com. After successfully connecting, they will see a Welcome screen. The yellow bar and the Comment & Markup tool bar will display. At this point the reviewers can get busy adding comments. They’ll need to click the Publish Comments button to upload their comments. To see other people’s comments they can click the Check for New Comments button.
The only interaction the reviewers have with Acrobat.com will be logging in. It’s a bit of extra work for the initiator, but so much more familiar and simple for the reviewers!
But will it work with forms?
Yes! And if you’re a geek like I am, you may find this is even more exciting.
Getting started
Create your interactive form. Before you distribute, pay attention to the location of your form document. I suggest that there may be a benefit to putting the form in its own folder. When you distribute, two additional files will be generated: [documentname]_distributed.pdf and [documentname]_responses.pdf. You will send [documentname]_distributed.pdf to the people you want to have complete the form. Or, and this is the really exciting part, put that file on your web site so that anyone can complete it! (Caveat: remember with all of this they must be using Reader 9 or Acrobat 9.) Your users don’t even need an Acrobat.com account! The responses will be uploaded and you will be able to download them by opening the [documentname]_responses.pdf file.
Distribute
Choose Forms > Distribute Form. Again, choose Acrobat.com as your method and send the message to only yourself. Notice that [documentname]_distributed.pdf and [documentname]_responses.pdf are created in the same folder. Send or post [documentname]_distributed.pdf.
View responses
Acrobat 9 collects the responses into a PDF Package. Simply opening [documentname]_responses.pdf prompts the importing of data. Each response is listed as a separate PDF document within the Package. You can view, filter, and export the data.
Use the Tracker
As the initiator of a review or distributor of a form the Tracker provides you with lots of information and options for managing your reviews and forms. In keeping with the work around, you want to avoid using the Tracker to Add Reviewers. Instead, send them an email with the review document attached.
Everything changes
For now, I like this method better than the workflow suggested by Adobe. But I’ll be keeping my eye out for changes. Acrobat.com already seems faster than when it first launched. Who knows when the interface may be changed to something less confusing? In my experience, Adobe does a good job of regularly improving their products. In the meantime, this technique takes advantage of the best part of Acrobat.com.
September 29, 2009
Tags: comment and review, forms
Posted in Acrobat | No Comments »