Adobe Acrobat has been the leading software for creating and managing secure digital documents for more than 20 years.
Here, we'll look at Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Adobe's next-generation Acrobat product is a powerful tool that offers enhanced efficiency and productivity features that can ultimately help your organization run more smoothly.
The Whys and Whats of PDFs
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It's a file format pioneered by Adobe co-founder John Warnock in the early 1990s that solved the problem of documents displaying differently across various devices and operating systems. Have you ever tried to open PowerPoint slides in Google Slides, or Mac Numbers spreadsheets in Excel, only to find that the formatting you painstakingly applied had completely changed? PDFs solve that problem, ensuring that your documents retain their original formatting no matter what platform they're viewed on.
PDFs offer users the ability to reduce file sizes without degrading a document's image quality. In practical terms, this means that a historical society could scan and convert paper archives into PDF files, and quickly and easily offer them for download over the Internet.
PDFs also provide security advantages that other document formats cannot. Because PDFs can be optionally secured to be both read-only and tamper evident, they are the preferred file format for legal documents. Adobe Acrobat DC extends these advantages through robust digital signing, certification, and document verification capabilities.
What Is Adobe Acrobat Pro DC?
If you're a longtime Acrobat user, you might be wondering how Adobe Acrobat Pro DC differs from Acrobat Pro 2017 or earlier versions of Acrobat.
Acrobat DC is a subscription product. In basic terms, this means that rather than paying once, you pay a monthly fee to use the product. Subscribing ensures that
- Your organization always has the latest version of Acrobat.
- You get the additional benefit of Adobe Document Cloud to store and share files online, plus services to enable complete workflows for sending, e-signing, and tracking documents.
- You have access to a range of features that are uniquely available in Acrobat DC. These include enhanced editing and form creation, plus the ability to send, track, and receive electronic and digital signatures, and much more.
Let's examine more closely how Acrobat Pro DC can help save your organization time and money.
Edit PDF Files Like Never Before
Have you ever come across a PDF file that you wanted to repurpose? Say you've been asked to update an existing contract, but the original Microsoft Word version is nowhere to be found. Do you need to retype the entire contract in Word, update, and save to PDF again? You don't!
Acrobat Pro DC allows you to turn a PDF into an editable document, and change both text and images directly in the program. Custom font generators match text in the document, and elements can be manipulated and moved around by dragging them to the desired location.
What if you've found a Microsoft Word form template online or come across a paper form that you know would work perfectly for your organization with a few minor adjustments? With Adobe Acrobat DC, you can easily turn paper and Microsoft Word forms into fillable ones with the PDF form creator.
Acrobat Pro DC also integrates with Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 365. In Word, you can turn any ".doc" or ".docx" file into a PDF with a single click, using the Acrobat tool located directly in the ribbon. Conversely, you can turn any PDF into a Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file with ease.
Work on the Go with Adobe Document Cloud
Acrobat Pro DC allows you to store and access your files in Adobe Document Cloud, which provides 20 GB of storage. Integrations are also available with Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive.
You can easily accomplish a variety of tasks directly from your mobile device, allowing you to receive, revise, and resend important collateral from just about anywhere. Using the Adobe Scan app (available for both iOS and Android), it's also easy to turn paper documents and forms into PDF files by scanning them with your mobile device. For example, maybe your organization collects a large stack of papers at an off-site event (waiver forms, applications, surveys, etc.). You can scan these on the spot and upload them to a secure location in the cloud.
Afterwards, you can merge all the files into a single, multipage PDF for greater efficiency. You can then use the search function to find specific terms, which is especially helpful when compiling data from the people you reach as a nonprofit. Because Acrobat Pro DC is optimized for touchscreen functionality, all of this is made even easier if you're working on the go.
Do Away with Paper-Based Signatures
Perhaps the most powerful feature in Acrobat Pro DC is the ability to both sign and collect signatures electronically. Let's go back to that stack of papers from the nonprofit event we discussed earlier.
Using Acrobat Pro DC, you could avoid passing out paper waivers altogether and send a PDF of a document in need of a signature via email. People can fill out any necessary information and electronically sign the file — all on their laptop or smartphone — via the Adobe Fill & Sign tool.
What's more, you can track who has and has not signed, filled out, or returned the document, and your records are automatically retained. You can also use Acrobat Pro DC to provide e-signatures yourself and avoid the cumbersome process of printing out a paper form, signing it, and scanning it.
Customize Security Settings
Acrobat Pro DC allows you to easily control and manage access to shared PDF files through a number of easy-to-use tools. Maybe you're working in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook, and wish to turn your file into a restricted PDF. Simply click the Restrict Editing box and prevent recipients from copying or editing the file.
If you're creating a file directly within Acrobat Pro DC, use the Publish Sensitive Information action in order to set a variety of restrictions, including the ability to redact information, password-protect, and prohibit copying and editing. You can even control whether or not your PDF can be printed.
Acrobat Pro DC is optimized to create, edit, and share files with anyone, anywhere. So it's even more important to comprehensively control who can access your PDFs and what can be done with the files once they've been sent.
A Fully Featured Solution to Consider at Your Nonprofit
Acrobat Pro DC is a powerful tool for creating universally accessible files for practically unlimited purposes. Its editing functionality and its compatibility with Microsoft Office can dramatically increase your efficiency, improve communication, and help your organization run more smoothly. And for an increasingly remote workforce in which many users access documents on mobile devices, Acrobat Pro DC is optimized to get work done wherever your mission takes you.
Additional Resources: Adobe for Nonprofits
