All of you use Adobe Acrobat on a daily basis. Whether it is Adobe Acrobat Reader, Standard or Pro, it is an excellent tool for legal professionals for everything from saving pleadings to file with the court’s case management/electronic case file system to reviewing discovery. Some of you have been using Acrobat for a while and know that Adobe comes out with new versions every couple of years. The latest version of Acrobat stopped using the number of release to distinguish a new version (like Adobe Acrobat XI), but now calls itself DC, which stands for Document Cloud, and labels the version by the year of the release (Adobe Acrobat DC 2016 the most recent version). Like many other software companies, Adobe is moving to a cloud based service giving users the option of working on multiple devices seamlessly if they choose to store their files online. Though designed for cloud use, users do not have to store their documents remotely, and they can continue using Acrobat DC as a desktop program as they always have.
Acrobat DC has a new look compared to previous versions, has been designed to be tablet and cell phone friendly, and gives users the ability to work on a document from different devices seamlessly. The addition of a user friendly tabbed tool bar makes switching from one document to another that much easier.
The “Home” tab shows the most recent files you have worked with. You can also search for a file in the search bar, open a file by navigating to it by clicking on “My Computer” or going to the File Menu and selecting → Open.
Once you open a document, the “Document” tab appears at the top of the screen, allowing you to easily navigate from the Document to the Tool Center to the Home page.
The “Tools” tab, otherwise known as the DC Tool Center centralizes all the features of Acrobat in one place for easy access. Now you can quickly find the tool you need without having to remember which menu in the tools section to navigate to.
The “Search Tools” option in DC is intuitive and easy to use. If you want to OCR a document, type OCR in the “Search Tools” section of the Tool Center and all the toolsets related to recognizing text will appear.
The tool pane that users see when looking at a document can be customized. You can add a tool to the tool pane by selecting “Add Shortcut” from the Tool Center or by right-clicking in the Tool Pane when searching for a tool and adding it there.
When Tool Groups are opened, they are automatically pinned to the top of the screen. The Tool Group stays open until you close it or open another tool.
DC gives you multiple ways of accessing the tools you are looking for and then quickly going back to working with your documents.
The new tabbed tool bar is just one feature of Acrobat DC that makes upgrading worthwhile. More features will be highlighted in upcoming posts so stay tuned.