Many folks are perfectly content with leaving things the way they are. “Why change it? It works, doesn’t it?” “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, if everyone subscribed to this way of thinking – and they used Acrobat in a review cycle with co-workers, it wouldn’t take long for the pages of a PDF file to become covered with dozens of yellow Sticky Notes. That’s how they all look – if you don’t change their properties. It would be infinitely easier to decipher who’s comments you were reading if each contributor had his/her own unique color for their comments. In Adobe products, I have long subscribed to the notion that if you’re looking for a command, right-click – it’s likely there. Many folks, therefore, have discovered on their own that if you right-click on a Stick Note’s icon, you can select Properties and change the way your note icon looks by making changes on the Appearance Tab. If you have created a Call Out, you could right-click on its edge and adjust the line style, line weight & fill color.
The secret to unlocking these attributes more quickly – and some that you can’t even get to by right clicking is to open up a toolbar called the Properties Bar. The Properties Bar concept is not new. Early releases of QuarkXpress had a properties bar, and it didn’t take Aldus, and ultimately Adobe long to realize its value and include it in Pagemaker.
To launch the Properties Bar, Right-Click the tool bar area at the top of your Acrobat interface & click on Properties Bar to make it visible. Now that it’s visible, it’s time to scratch your head. It appears to do NOTHING! It looks like a painting without any paint on it – a blank sheet of paper. Actually, it’s doing just what it’s designed to do – show you the properties of whatever object you have currently selected. You likely had nothing selected, so it was just minding its own business and waiting for you to click on something. Click on a Sticky Note to select it. The Properties Bar instantly reports the Note’s 
properties, and you can change its attributes by simply dialing in a different value in the Properties Bar. Quick & Easy! Any commenting object you click on is easily customized. Clicking on a Call Out allows you to quickly customize its stroke, fill & opacity. Double-clicking inside the text area puts you in text edit mode, and you can then select a custom typeface and text alignment.
If you like the Properties Bar as much as I do, you may want to have it onscreen all the times, and a way to keep it always visible (yet out of the way) is to dock it to the bottom of your Acrobat window.
Learn what PDF technology is all about… and how to use Acrobat 9 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 to request training information and options.
