Top PDF tips and tricks with Adobe Acrobat

Here are the top tips and tricks that you can use to view, annotate, sign, and work on PDF documents in Adobe Acrobat Reader more effectively.

Top PDF tips and tricks with Adobe Acrobat

These are the top tips and tricks using which you can improve the experience of working with PDF documents in free Adobe Acrobat Reader:

Add comments with sticky notes, highlights, text boxes, etc.
Record and add audio to PDFs.
Use Fill & Sign tool.
Add stamps to your PDFs.
Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly perform tasks.
Quickly revert to a previously saved version of your PDF.
Customize PDF settings as per your preferences.
Measure the distance, area, and perimeter of objects in PDF.
Share PDFs with other users to view, comment, and sign them.
Save your PDF as a plain text document.

Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader Tips & Tricks

1] Add comments with sticky notes and highlights

Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to perform some standard editing tasks on your PDFs. These include adding comments to the PDF, inserting sticky notes, highlighting important text, adding text boxes, etc. You can also create drawings in your PDFs and add shapes like lines, circles, arrows, rectangles, ovals, text callouts, and more. It also lets you perform some basic text formatting such as underline text, strikethrough text, etc.

To use these tools, go to the Tools tab and click on the Open button present under the Comments tool. It will then open up the related toolbar that you can use to edit or annotate your PDF.

2] Record and add audio to PDFs

You can also add audio recordings to your PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Reader. It allows you to add voice comments in PDFs. To add audio recordings to PDFs, choose the Tools > Comments > Open option and click on the Add a new attachment option. From the drop-down menu options, select the Record Audio option. Now, record audio through your microphone and then attach it to your PDF.

You can even add a pre-recorded audio file to the PDF. It supports WAV and AIFF audio formats to do that.

3] Use Fill & Sign tool

One of the most important tools in Acrobat Reader is its Fill & Sign tool. Using this tool, you can fill out PDF forms and electronically sign your PDF documents. This tool can be accessed from the Sign menu or Tools tab. It lets you draw your signatures or add initials to the PDF. You can also browse and add an image of your signature from your PC.

You can also request recipients to digitally sign and validate the PDF. To do that, you can click on the Request E-Signatures button and then enter the name or email address of the recipients to send them the request. However, in the free version of Acrobat Reader, you can send e-signature requests to a limited number of users only.

TIP: Adobe Fill and Sign not working.

4] Add stamps to your PDFs

Stamping PDF is quite a regular PDF annotation task. In Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can easily insert stamps into your PDF documents. These stamps can be Confidential, Approved, Rejected, Modified, Final version, Draft, etc. You can use these and more stamps by using the Tools tab > Stamp option.

5] Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly perform tasks

Adobe Acrobat Reader lets you use some keyboard shortcut keys to quickly perform a specific task. Some of the important Acrobat hotkeys that you must know are as follows:

Move focus to menus: F10.
Switch between one opened PDF to another: CTRL+TAB.
Close the current PDF: CTRL+F4.
Find in the document: CTRL+F.
Activate and deactivate Read Out Loud: SHIFT+CTRL+Y.
Read out loud text in the PDF: SHIFT+CTRL+B.
Pause reading out loud: SHIFT+CTRL+C.
Open the navigation pane: SHIFT+CTRL+F5.
Expand all bookmarks: SHIFT+*.
Enable/disable the Read mode: CTRL+H.
Enter/exit fullscreen: CTRL+L

You can also use single-key shortcuts to quickly access tools and enhance your workflow speed.

To do that, click on the Edit > Preferences option, and from the General tab, tick the checkbox associated with the Use single-key accelerators to access tools option. Finally, press the OK button to save changes. You can now use the following shortcut keys:

Hand tool: H
Select tool: V
Marquee Zoom tool: Z
Select Object tool: R
Stamp tool: K
Current highlighting tool: U
Text Box tool: X

Read: Cannot edit PDF files on Acrobat Reader DC.

6] Quickly revert to a previously saved version of your PDF

If you want to quickly revert to a previous version of the opened PDF document and undo all changes, you can do that too. Just click on the File menu and choose the Revert option. On the prompted confirmation dialog, press the Revert button and it will undo all the changes and restore a previously saved version of the PDF.

7] Customize PDF settings as per your preferences

To work on documents, you can customize PDF settings as per your requirements. You can customize the page display preferences like page layout, resolution, rendering options, show/hide large images, use smooth zooming, use logical page numbers, show reference XObject targets, etc. Apart from that, you can also set up other preferences like multimedia, accessibility, screen reader options, search options, forms, enable spellcheck, etc.

See: Fix Adobe Reader error 109 when opening, reading, or saving PDF.

8] Measure the distance, area, and perimeter of objects in PDF

Adobe Acrobat provides a dedicated Measure tool to find out different statistics like distance, area, and perimeter of objects in your PDFs. It also lets you find the location on the map or select an area to view the respective longitude and latitude values. This tool is really helpful in analyzing a geospatial PDF document. Besides that, you can also view object data.

To use the Measure tool, go to the Tools tab and select the Open option under the Measure tool.

9] Share PDFs with other users to view, comment, and sign them

It also lets you share your PDF documents with other users who can read the PDF document as well as add comments and sign the PDF. You can go to the File menu > Share File option or click on the Tools > Share > Open option to share your PDF file with other users.

You can also add a deadline for the document by clicking on the Add Deadline button and then choosing a due date.

Read: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC not showing bookmarks in Windows PC.

10] Save your PDF as a plain text document

You can also save your PDF document as a plain text document in Adobe Acrobat. To do that, click on the File > Save as Text option and enter the filename of the document to save it.

The PDF tips and tricks about Adobe Acrobat that we shared above are applicable to the free version. If you have a Pro edition, there is a lot more you can do with PDFs using Acrobat. This includes combining files into a single PDF, converting PDFs to Excel, Word, or Powerpoint, compressing PDFs, and more.

How do I optimize a PDF in Acrobat?

To optimize or compress a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat, you can click on the File menu and choose the Compress File option. Alternatively, move to the Tools tab, scroll down to the Compress File tool, click on the Open button, choose the input PDF, and follow the prompted instructions to compress the PDF.

How can I make a PDF more interesting?

You can create a PDF more interactive and interesting by adding interactive elements to it. These elements may include PDF form elements, clickable links, buttons, multimedia items, audio comments, and more. All these options are provided in Adobe Acrobat Reader.