Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional Review

I love Adobe Acrobat; the Reader and the Professional program(s).  The document collaboration software has made my life easier in many, many ways; e.g. it allows me to scan in all of bills and important correspondence and store them in a universally accepted format (Adobe .PDF) for later retrieval and printing.  This has proved ideal for providing the often laborious number of documents needed to apply for large loan; instead of printing out reams of paper, I can just burn all of necessary paperwork to CD-ROM.  

By now everyone should be familiar with .PDF files, they are everywhere, and they have become a staple of corporate and Internet file sharing.  Acrobat is now the defacto standard in cross-platform file sharing because the .PDF format is not platform dependant, its portable; i.e. as long as you have the Acrobat Reader-now up to version 8.0-you can read a .PDF file, and now even fill out .PDF forms. 

Up to version 6.0 of Adobe Acrobat Professional however, robust electronic form creation was the province of-the very expensive and stand alone-Adobe Life Cycle Designer.  Oh sure you could create simple electronic forms with Acrobat 6.0 Professional, but Life Cycle Designer is a much more robust product.  Adobe has now introduced Acrobat version 8.0 Standard and Professional; and I am please to see that Life Cycle Designer remains a part of the Acrobat Professional portfolio.        

My Viewpoint

The biggest new feature in Acrobat 8.0 Professional is the ability of Acrobat Reader (versions 7.0 and 8.0) users to edit, fill-in and otherwise manipulate forms made in Acrobat 8.0 Professional, and then email or print it, though you will not be able to save the data.  When emailed the data is saved in .XML format, which means it can be read by multitude of programs including Microsoft Word. 

I tested this functionality out myself by first creating a new form from a template using Adobe Life Cycle Designer 8.0 and then saving the form as a .PDF file.  I downloaded and installed Acrobat Reader 8.0, opened the form, filled it in, and emailed it to myself.  I was then able to open the .XML file in MS Word and read the inputs.  This functionality opens up the world of forms sharing and standardization across a given enterprise.          

Adobe has once again integrated Adobe Life Cycle Designer into the program allowing one to create and or edit forms from templates or scratch.  Combining different disparate document formats into one .PDF file is a new function, as is the ability to archive Outlook email into a .PDF file.  The program can convert single, or batch emails as well as complete folders and nested folders.  Once converted or archived, the .PDF file can then be opened in Acrobat Reader.  You can also schedule automatic archives of your emails or archive on the fly, via the Outlook menu.  I tested this functionality as well and it works like a dream.         

Forms Creation

Acrobat Professional 8.0 and Life Cycle Designer 8.0 (forms builder) are two separate programs, and as such can be opened independent of each other.  Life Cycle Designer 8.0 can also be opened from inside Acrobat Professional 8.0 via the Forms menu item.  When you open the forms builder, you are given four choices:

• Select a Template;
• Start with an Electronic document;
• Import data from a spreadsheet, or;
• Scan from paper.       

With Acrobat Professional 8.0 and Life Cycle Designer 8.0, I am able to design very simple printable forms to very comprehensive electronic forms complete with dropdown menus, scroll bars, and other special drop-in elements, that can be emailed.  Not too long ago one of my client's gave me the template in twenty-two separate Microsoft Word files, which I then combined into one document, and then saved the results, and imported them into form builder of Life Cycle Designer 7.0 by choosing New Form.  After choosing New Form I was presented with four choices: New Blank Form, Based on a Template, Import a PDF Document, or Import a Word Document; I choose the last.

After importing the Word document into the form builder I was able to build the form page by page, using a rather extensive library of tools that can be customized and added to.  Building a form is a simple as dragging the applicable tool to the appropriate spot on the form page.  You can place the tools free-form with the help of vertical and horizontal rulers, or you can have to tools snap to the ready made grid.  This functionality has not changed under Life Cycle Designer 8.0, where there are now even more templates for building your own forms, and the process had been made easier.    

Reviewing the results of your labor in Acrobat format is made simple by via a tab, which directly emulates the look and functionality of the finished form.  Building a twenty-two page form was time consuming but relatively simple; I was able to accomplish the task in about 30 hours.  Make no mistake, the form builder is powerful tool, that is also about to solicit input from Access as well as SQL databases, and .XML documents.  Incorporating these design elements into the first version of my clients form was not needed, although he has expressed interest in doing so in the future.

The finished form can be filled out in both Acrobat Professional 6.0 - 8.0 and Reader 7.0 & 8.0.  However, as I stated earlier with Acrobat Reader the filled out form can only be printed, and or emailed in .XML format, while the full (Adobe) program can be used to save the results to a .XML or .PDF file.  The results can also be emailed to a person, or persons, in the form of an .XML file that can then be imported into any application that can utilize the file type.     

Concluding Viewpoint

Would I recommend purchasing Acrobat Professional 8.0?  The program has a lot to recommend it, including the ability to use Acrobat Reader to fill out forms created with Life Cycle Designer 8.0, combine dissimilar document types into one .PDF document, and archive Outlook emails into a .PDF file, or files.  I upgraded from version 7.0 of the program to avail myself of the new features because I use the program extensively, especially to build and or edit electronic forms. 

It is certainly a growth avenue for my consulting practice.  That being said Acrobat Professional 8.0 is easy to use and more importantly, to learn, and is the next logical progression for a program that I consider the most useful software application of the last five years.