41
What makes Acrobat 6 such a worthwhile upgrade is the addition of e-mail-
based and browser-based reviewing. These new reviewing features, available
to users of Acrobat 6 for Windows, streamline the initiation of a review cycle
by allowing you to distribute a PDF review document either by e-mail or by
posting the PDF file on a network (intranet or Internet) server and allowing
participants to review it in a Web browser.
Here’s how a typical Acrobat PDF review cycle works — the initiator of a review
distributes a PDF document to reviewers, known as participants, who then use
the Acrobat commenting tools to annotate the document for the edification of
the review initiator. The initiator then reviews the reviews of the reviewers
(sounds fun, right?). Acrobat enables you to set up either e-mail-based or
browser-based reviews. When deciding which type of review to use, note that
with e-mail-based reviews, participants don’t need access to a shared server;
with browser-based reviews, participants can see each others’ comments on
an ongoing basis.
Initiating an e-mail-based review
In an e-mail-based review, you (the review initiator) send an e-mail to each par-
ticipant. Attached to this e-mail is a copy of the PDF document for review in the
form of an FDF (Form Data Format) setup file that contains configuration set-
tings for importing reviewer comments. FDF is an Adobe variation of PDF used
to import and export form data in PDF documents. (For more on interactive
forms in Acrobat, see Chapter 14.) The participants add comments to the PDF
document copy, and then e-mail the comments back to you via the FDF setup
file. When you open the attached FDF file, Acrobat opens your original PDF
document and automatically imports participant comments and annotations
for viewing in the original document. To get the ball rolling, make sure to save
your PDF document in a convenient place on your hard drive so that the FDF
setup file has no trouble finding it, and then follow these steps:
1. Open the PDF document you want to send out for review and choose
File➪Send by E-mail for Review.
The Send by E-mail for Review dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 9-1.
If you haven’t specified an e-mail address in the Identity window of the
Preferences dialog box in Acrobat 6, an alert dialog box appears,
prompting you to enter an e-mail address where review comments will
be sent. This e-mail address is added to your Acrobat preferences for
future reviews. Enter your e-mail address and click OK.
2. In the Send by E-mail for Review dialog box, enter participant
addresses in the To, Cc (carbon copy), or Bcc (blind carbon copy)
text boxes.
162
Part III: Reviewing, Editing, and Securing PDFs