Acrobat Tips

Rane has chosen Acrobat as the most efficient way of storing and distributing our documents electronically. Acrobat uses a file format called PDF (portable document format), and all Acrobat files are recognised by the .PDF extention. The same files run on Macintosh, Windows, Unix, Linux, and other platforms.

There are several advantages to Acrobat. All pages retain their original look, styles, fonts and graphics. A manual may be viewed or printed at home and look very similar to the one that was originally supplied in the Rane shipping box, with the only exception being the quality of paper and the printer used. They have a relatively small file size compared to a similar file in a native application, allowing relatively quick downloading from a web site.

Adobe Reader or Acrobat Reader?

Same thing. Adobe has renamed the products to help avoid future confusion. The reader is now called Adobe Reader, to differentiate between Acrobat, which is required to create PDF files. It is best to just choose one version of Acrobat or Reader on your system, and uninstall previous versions before installing the latest.

This icon indicates a document in Acrobat PDF format. If you have problems reading one of our PDF files, be sure you are using Acrobat version 5, 6, 7 or 8. If you don't have it, get the Acrobat Reader from Adobe. Versions are available for Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, Palm, Pocket PC, and Symbian OS.

Acrobat Browser Plug-In

The Acrobat plug-in is included with all versions and is automatically loaded into either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer when Acrobat or Reader is installed. This allows any PDF file to be viewed within the browser window while online.

Save a document that is visible within the browser for reading later. The saving procedure varies between different browsers.
In Netscape Navigator, select File > Save As...
In Internet Explorer, select File > Save As... and choose Source as the type.

Acrobat Printing Issues

To print a document, better results can be obtained by saving the PDF file to your local hard drive, opening the Acrobat Reader application, and printing from there. See the paragraph above for saving instructions.

Certain non-postscript printers can get memory overruns when being sent a file with a lot of the vector art found in some of our documents. The solution is to go to Page or Print Setup, select the printer driver, go to Graphics Mode, and select Raster Graphics, (not vector graphics). Some printer drivers work better with 'Print as Image' selected.

Acrobat Navigation

The buttons may change with each release (above buttons are from version 5). It's good to familiarize where these buttons are, which may be toggled on or off in later versions.

The hand button can grab the page to move it up or down while in zoom view. It is also the default button for entering text in Acrobat forms.

The magnify button lets you zoom. The Windows Control key or the Mac Option key changes the zoom in to a zoom out.

The text button lets you copy and paste text into other documents. For instance, in bids that require architectural specs, go to the last page of any data sheet, use the 'abc' Text button, and click-drag to highlight the text. Column text is a little trickier. Hold down the Control key while dragging across one column in Windows, or use the Option key in Mac. With the text column highlighted, select Edit > Copy or control-C, open Word, and select Edit > Paste or control-V. Repeat on the next column.

Within any single PDF, the page forward > and backward < buttons are easy to figure out, they move forward one page (1 2 3 4 ) and backward one page (4 3 2 1). The first page |< button jumps you to the very first page of a document, and the last page >| button jumps to the last page.

The previous view << and next view >> buttons are just like the same buttons on your web browser. These remember the previous pages or documents you have hyperlinked within PDF documents that use indexes or hyperlinks. The difference is the page forward < and backward > buttons go with the order of sequential pages, and the previous and next view buttons go with the order of visited hyperlinks.

The page layout buttons let you zoom in or out quickly. The first page button is at 100% zoom. When you are at any of our 8.5 x 11 documents, the full page (center) button lets you see the whole page, but you might not be able to read it. Use the page width button to get it readable on the screen, then use the scroll bar or hand tool to get up or down the page.

The Find button with the binoculars is a simple word search that looks for a word in the current document. You may have Acrobat Reader with Search installed, in which case a second binocular and page button exists, which searches a collection of documents that have a central index.

See Help in the Acrobat menu for more details and other functions, which change with each release.

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