Adobe released new versions of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader today, promising to change some workflows which use PDF forms, annotations, and the editing of PDF files. Acrobat XI Pro is now immediately available for purchase, and it is a free download for those who have an Adobe Creative Cloud membership. Adobe Reader XI is a free download.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Many workflows which originate in InDesign use Reader or Acrobat so changes in those two core applications may affect you. Here are some of the more important features in Adobe Reader XI:
- Beginning with InDesign CS6, you can now create PDF forms for distribution. Until Adobe Reader XI, you needed to open the PDF you created in Acrobat Pro, and save it as a Reader-Extended PDF so Reader users could fill out the form and save it. Reader XI now allows a user to fill out and save a form without that extra step.
- In the past, to include Reader users in a comment and review workflow, you had to Reader-enable the PDF you sent them in a similar way. Now Reader XI comes with a full set of commenting tools.
Adobe Reader XI
Acrobat XI comes with some major advances as well:
- In the past, our usual refrain was that you couldn’t do extensive editing of a PDF in Acrobat. That has now changed! The editing of text and graphics has been greatly enhanced in Acrobat XI. You can now reflow text from line to line, for example. While it’s not perfect, it’s a dramatic improvement.
- In previous versions of Acrobat, Mac users were stymied when you wanted to open a Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file into Acrobat to convert it to PDF, or to include these files when combining documents together. Now, if you have Microsoft Office installed on your Mac, you can include these files. (There are still no PDF Maker plug-ins installed on the Mac, and hyperlink and bookmark export from Word is not yet supported.)
And one “downgrade”: A runtime version of Adobe Flash was installed with Acrobat and Reader 9 and X. It is no longer, apparently for security reasons. If you create a multimedia PDF which requires Flash, it will have to be installed on the computer or device where you are opening the PDF for the multimedia to be played.
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on October 15, 2012
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