I was anxious to do the upgrade. I always am. Microsoft released their Office 2010 not long ago, and I couldn’t wait to see the upgraded suite in action. I was long overdue to reformat my hard drive & put a fresh operating system installation in place, so I backed up my data, wiped my hard drive clean and installed Windows 7, all my needed apps, including the new Office 2010. Everything seemed great, and I really liked the way Word looked and felt.
Then it happened. I created a new Word document. I needed to convert it to a PDF, so I went my usual route. After saving the Word file, I went to click on the Acrobat Tab to bring the Acrobat Ribbon forward… and it wasn’t there. Huh? I poked around menu after menu, but simply found no hint of an Acrobat Ribbon or its coveted PDFMaker. Oh no! My readers and students know how I stress this method of converting Word to PDF over printing to PDF. If you want automatically created Bookmarks, articles, or have any hopes of a 508-compliant PDF file, you really need to use the PDFMaker.
An internet search quickly revealed that I was not imagining this problem, and I was not alone in my discovery. In fact, here are excerpts from Adobe’s online FAQ regarding this issue:
The Acrobat ribbons, also known as Acrobat PDFMaker, do not work with Office 2010 applications the same way they do with Office 2007. Customers using Acrobat 9.0 through 9.2 will see the Acrobat ribbon in Office 2010 applications; however, attempting to use PDFMaker functionality from the Acrobat ribbon can result in unexpected behavior. Customers who update to Acrobat 9.3 or later will not see the Acrobat 9 ribbon in Office 2010 applications.
Adobe plans to add support for its Acrobat PDFMaker technology for Office 2010 in the next major version of Acrobat
OK. What should you take away from all this? If you rely on the PDFMaker’s capabilities to create smart, capable PDF files, or if 508 Compliancy is required in your PDFs that come from Word, you may NOT want to upgrade your Office apps just yet. Adobe is clearly aware of the issue, and we will all be making smart, compliant PDFs from Office apps soon. Stay tuned.
Are you intrigued by the mention of smart PDF files? Might you be missing out on some of the amazing features that are part of Acrobat technology? 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.
We are a training institution using the latest Microsoft Office Pro (2010) and Creative Suite Design Premium (CS5) suites.
Pdfmaker has been a key part of the PDF Basics syllabus for some time and to have to wait till the end of 2011 for a solution (Creative Suite 6?) is a large inconvenience.
Given that Adobe are still selling Acrobat 9 as a “current” product as part of the suites, I believe that a free upgade to Acrobat 9.xx that has the functionallity restored should be in order, rather than being told that “ps and by the way … the product that you bought TODAY doesn’t work and possibly never will unless you upgrade”!
As well as the issue of 508 compliancy in the USA there is also the issue of ISO32000 compliancy for quality assurred organisations world wide.