Controlling a Viewer's Experience of Your PDF

Whether you'd like your pdf to be viewed in book view (two-up continuous with a cover page) or single page view or appear with the Pages Panel, you can make sure that happens every time the pdf is opened. Here's how to control a viewer's experience of your pdf:

1. Open a pdf in Acrobat. I'm using Acrobat Pro so I'm guessing you probably need Acrobat Pro for this to work.


2. Select File > Properties or hit Cmd-D to bring up Document Properties.


3. Click on the Initial View tab.


4. Now choose whether you want page only or side panels (page, bookmarks, etc) under Navigation tab drop down menu. Choose from single or two-up options under Page drop down menu. Choose from options like fit page, fit width or a zoom percentage in the Magnification drop down menu. Choose any other options as desired.


5. Save the pdf. Close it and reopen it to confirm your initial view settings have been applied. It will now open with these view setting every time.

Restoring Acrobat's Launch Speed

If you remember the days before pdfs and Adobe Acrobat Reader, you know how much easier the world of document sharing is with this invention. But if you've been around since then, you've probably also noticed how bloated Acrobat has gotten and how annoying it is to use because it takes SO long to load.

Today, you can reclaim Acrobat and restore Acrobat's launch speed by disabling all unnecessary plug-ins.

• To disable a plugin, find the plug-in and move it out of the plug-ins folder. If you have a Plug-ins Disabled folder provided, move it into that folder. I've kept EScript.acroplugin, Reflow.acroplugin, Search.acroplugin, Spelling.acroplugin and WebLink.acroplugin active and disabled the rest.
  
• Mac OS Plug-ins folder: Control-click the application icon, and choose Show Package Contents. Then double-click the Contents folder and open the Plug-ins folder.

• Windows Plug-ins folder: Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\plug_ins
• You can always re-activate a plugin by moving it back into the Plug-ins folder.
• This information is available in the Acrobat 9 Help File under Manage plug-ins.

Update: I'm finding out the hard way which other plugins I really need. So far I've needed EScript (required to view pdfs online) and WebLink (opens links from pdfs in a web browser).