Adobe announces Acrobat X

Adobe today announced the next generation of Acrobat. What does that mean? Acrobat X (pronounced Ten) is a vast improvement over previous versions, that includes a new intuitive user interface, collaboration features and other ways to make you more productive.

As Adobe continues work on Acrobat Dynamic PDF, Acrobat X users can create new PDF Portfolios, completely stylized and branded to allow multiple files to be delivered as a package. You can even include remote content such as websites & online video that will play when the PDF Portfolio is opened. The result is a very engaging PDF that is still lightweight and extremely portable.

Acrobat X users can leverage Dynamic PDFs to collect feedback from their colleagues by sending PDF documents that can automatically send the marked up comments back to the document author. These “workflow aware” PDFs know where they came from and with a click of a button within Acrobat X or Reader X the comments are sent in real time, reducing emails and allowing multiple users to collaborate in context with ease.

Microsoft SharePoint users can take advantage of the new integration features within Acrobat X. Checkin/checkout workflows, version & commenting are all now supported within Acrobat X as well as support for Sharepoint in Review & Comment workflows.

Form developers will be able to take advantage of the built in form improvements in addition to the bundled LiveCycle Designer ES2 for Acrobat X Pro users.

Acrobat X Pro users will become more productive with the use of Actions. An action can be created from a series of steps in Acrobat then run by the user. One example is when publishing documents online, an Action could be made to remove hidden information, add a watermark, ensure accessibility features are enabled and add security. Once setup, the user never has to remember each particular step and settings, Acrobat ensures the same consistent results.

Of course, there is also a new version of Adobe Reader. Reader X includes a new secure sandbox environment, further integration with Adobe’s Acrobat.com online service, and great new commenting tools to allow you to add sticky notes & highlight any PDF!

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14 Comments

  1. October 18, 2010

    Mark,

    Wow, the new Acrobat X looks amazing. The export to Word document and maintaining formatting, layout, and headers and footers is one feature I’ll be using.

    Mark, any clue on when Acrobat X will be bundled into the CS5 suites, like Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium?

    • October 18, 2010

      Hi Deborah!
      Acrobat X doesn’t only look amazing, it IS amazing 🙂
      Unfortunately I don’t have a date I can share regarding availability within CS5.
      regards
      Mark

  2. Deborah
    October 18, 2010

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks, I’ve been tweeting with Adobe_Care today about Acrobat X for CS5 users. Alas, I still have no idea when Acrobat X will be bundled with CS5.

    Last response from Adobe_Care was a link to an Adobe customer support page for special pricing for existing CS5 customers to upgrade to Acrobat X. Unfortunately, I found no information on the page for the Acrobat X upgrade.

    Sigh.

  3. Andrew Leeder
    October 18, 2010

    Well done Mark!
    Brian Henderson Eat your heart out.
    Next we’ll see the Adobe report on 9 news
    Looks a good improvment, particularly Export to word.

    Andrew

  4. Koji
    October 19, 2010

    I was wondering, is it going to work with Office 2010 x64bit version. especially the make pdfmaker?

    thanks

    • October 19, 2010

      Hi Koji
      At this point Acrobat X will only support the 32bit edition of Office 2010.
      regards
      Mark

  5. Chad
    November 13, 2010

    The reason MS recommends the 32-bit version of Office is because many companies (like Adobe) are slow to update their apps to support a 64-bit environment.

    It’s a big chicken-and-egg problem and the third party app vendors should be held to a standard of supporting both 32 and 64 bit editions of their code as they make major new releases.

    Adobe also doesn’t mention that they don’t work with the 64 bit version of Office in their FAQ when they claim Office 2010 support. They should at the very least clarify this and say they only support 32 bit Office 2010 deployments.

    • November 14, 2010

      Hi Chad
      I’m not sure I agree about the huge necessity to upgrade apps to 64 bit just because it can be done. There has to be a benefit to justify any development effort. I’m not sure how a 64 bit version of Office would benefit most users. Maybe power Excel or Access users with huge files? 64bit operating systems a must have as power users blow past the 4Gb capacity of 32 bit systems but how many of us (apart from pro image & video users) really need more than 4Gb for an individual app? 64 bit is something that Adobe is definitely supporting as it makes sense (take a look at native 64bit Photoshop, After Effects, Lightroom and more).

      Good point about the FAQ, I’ll pass along that feedback to the team.
      Mark

  6. December 2, 2010

    This is highly discouraging. Just upgraded my new PC to MS office 2010 and installed Acrobat Pro X – only to find out it’s not compatible with my 64 bit version. So before I start googling around – anyone know if I can downgrade my MS Office to 32 bit?

    • December 2, 2010

      Hi Shad. Clearly I cannot speak for Microsoft, but this is from their Office 2010 website “This product includes both 32- and 64-bit versions for a single computer. We recommend the 32-bit version, which runs great on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows. People who routinely use very large documents or spreadsheets that need more than 2 GB of memory may want to run the 64-bit version, but many common add-ins for Office don’t run correctly in the 64-bit edition.”

  7. December 3, 2010

    Thanks – I actually was able to login to Microsoft where I purchased Office 2010 and redownload. This time when I selected I was sure to choose 32 bit. It’s funny – the default download is 32 bit – but if your computer comes preloaded with Office Starter 2010 on a 64 bit machine – the default download from Microsoft is also the 64 bit. Thanks for the note.

  8. Jeanette Eichhorn
    April 22, 2011

    I want to know if there is any way to either allow only one digital signature from a computer to sign a document, or any way of finding out if the multiple signatures came from the same computer. I am able to make several signatures in other people’s names and apply them to one document. We are trying to make sure that the same person doesn’t sign the document and then also sign as the approver in another name. I use Acrobat Pro X and LiveCycle desinger 9.0

  9. April 25, 2011

    Hi Jeanette – yes it is possible, take a look at the signature field properties within LiveCycle Designer to specify what signature can be applied to each field.

    It does sound like your issue is more related to signature security rather than the form itself. Do you use even basic id security like applying a password to each signature / certificate?

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