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Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to view and print Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. Because of their relatively small file size and excellent print quality, PDF files are often used to distribute documents over the Internet. The most common use of PDF files at Brandeis is in WebCT, where students can download and print online class materials.
Acrobat Reader 6.0 is available for most operating systems, including Windows, Macintosh, and several versions of Unix. If you are running an older operating system, you might be limited to using an earlier version of Acrobat Reader. For more information on system requirements and to download, visit the Adobe web site at:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
To install Acrobat Reader, go to
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Here you'll need to enter information about your operating system (e.g., Windows XP, Mac OS X) and your connection speed.
After entering this information and specifiying whether you wish to have any additional features, press the red "Start Download" button to begin downloading the file. When prompted, choose to save it to your desktop.
After the download has completed, you will then need to install the program. To install it, click on the icon.
Upon clicking the icon in a PC, the program should begin to install itself (asking you where, for instance, you would like the program to be stored on your computer). A handy status bar will keep you informed of the progress and the extimated time to completion. When it has finished, you have completed the installation of Adobe Acrobat.
Upon clicking on the Icon in a Mac, you will be prompted to drag the program folder into your Applications folder. After dragging the folder into your computer, you have completed the installation process.
Once you've installed Acrobat Reader, opening any file with the .pdf extension should automatically launch the application. The installer also includes a web browser plug-in that will enable you to view PDF files from within your web browser. If you ever try to view a PDF file on the web, but your browser tells you that it doesn't know what to do with the file, this means that the plug-in either is missing or is an outdated version. If this is the case, you should download and install the latest version of Acrobat Reader.
To open a PDF document, go to the File menu and choose Open. In the Open File dialog box, highlight the file and click Open. You can also open a PDF document by double-clicking the file icon.
The author of a PDF document can set several defaults for the document, including viewing mode. If you have a document that displays on a black background with no menu bar, it has been set to automatically display in full-screen mode. You can press Control+Shift+M (Windows) or Command+Shift+M (Macintosh) to redisplay the menu bar temporarily. To override a document's default behavior, press Control+Shift (Window) or Option+Shift (Macintosh) when opening the file.
To open a PDF document that has been linked in a web page, simply click the link. If the Acrobat plug-in is properly installed, the document will display in the browser with the Acrobat toolbar on top. Note that PDF files can get very large, particularly if they contain graphics, so you might find yourself staring at a blank screen while the file is downloaded. If, instead of displaying a PDF file, you want to save it to your computer, right-click the link (Macintosh: control-click) and select "Save link as..." or "Download link to disk", depending on your browser.
To print a PDF document, first select the print options you want by going to File > Print Setup (Windows) or Page Setup (Macintosh). When you are ready to print, choose File > Print. Acrobat Reader offers a useful Shrink to Fit print option, which scales oversized pages to fit within the selected paper size. Some PDF files produced by Acrobat Distiller 3.0 can contain custom halftone screens intended for high-resolution imagesetters. When sent to standard desktop printers, these custom halftone screens can produce muddy images. To avoid poor image quality, choose "Use Printer's Halftone Screen" in the Print dialog box.
To change the magnification within a page, you can use the zoom tool, the magnification box in the status bar, or the toolbar buttons (Actual Size, Fit Page, and Fit Width). The maximum magnification level is 800%. The minimum magnification level is 12%. If you zoom in on a large document, you can use the hand tool to move the page around on-screen.
Acrobat Reader also offers several document-based zoom levels. Fit Page displays the entire page in the window. Fit Width displays the full width of the document, and Fit Visible displays the width of document minus the margins. These three options are "sticky", which means they don't change as you scroll through the document.
1. The Acrobat toolbar" />
The Acrobat toolbar
To increase magnification, do one of the following:
To decrease magnification, do one of the following:
Acrobat Reader provides many ways to page through a document. The first is to use the direction buttons in the toolbar, which are: Last Page, Previous Page, Next Page, and First Page. You will also find all these functions under the View menu. The Page Up and Page Down keys on your keyboard will take you the next or previous page respectively, while the Home button will take to the beginning of the document and the End button will take you to the end. Finally you can also jump to any specific page by either clicking the page number box in the status bar at the bottom of the main window or by selecting Go to Page from the View menu. Enter the page you wish to view and then click OK.
In Full Screen view, PDF documents fill the entire screen, with the menu bar, toolbar, status bar, and window controls hidden. Document authors can set PDF documents to open in Full Screen, or you can set the view for yourself. Full Screen view is often used for presentations, sometimes with automatic page advancement and transitions. In Full Screen view, the pointer remains active so that you can click links and open notes. To move between pages in Full Screen mode use the Up and Down arrow keys or the Page Up and Page Down keys. To return to normal view hit the Escape (Esc) key.
To quit from Acrobat choose Quit (Macintosh) or Exit (Windows) from the File menu.
