When I went off to college, my family bought me a dictionary. It was new, crisp & up to date. Oh yes… it weighed a ton! I still have it, but it is certainly not new, crisp, or even up to date now. It is, however still heavy. That’s one reason it remains untouched for years on my bookshelf. The other reason it hasn’t been used in a while is because many dictionaries have been made available online for anyone to use for free.
Adobe has wisely anticipated a workflow scenario: While reading a PDF file, you come across a word you don’t know. You’ll want to either memorize or copy the word, open your web browser, navigate to an online dictionary site, type or 
paste in the word… and then finally read its meaning. Whew… too much work. To jump from the 1st step to the last step immediately, try this cool trick. Highlight the word for which you need its meaning. Right-click on the highlighted area & select Look up “your word”. Acrobat opens up your default web browser and takes you directly to dictionary.com – AND queries your word for you, so you are presented with the definition immediately.
Not only is this available in Acrobat Pro, but it even exists in Reader. To illustrate this visually (along with just how universal PDF files are), here is a screenshot of the same document open in Reader… in Linux! Sweet.
Learn what PDF technology is all about… and how to use Acrobat 9 Professional to create, edit & enhance your PDF files. I offer training classes in Adobe Acrobat 9, either in your facility or online. To learn more about my Acrobat classes, send me an email or sign up for my online classes.
