PDF files can be opened by every major operating system and the format can be used by dozens of different applications. In addition, the majority of modern web browsers allow PDF files to be read without having to call an external application. Increasingly, mobile operating systems are including PDF readers, making the PDF file almost universally usable. Compare this with Microsoft Word, which can only be read by a few applications, and you can see the usefulness of this wide-ranging support.1 See the Saving and Sharing page to create PDFs from Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Microsoft Word - Save a Document as PDF
Google docs - Download a document as a PDF
It is possible to annotate or mark-up a PDF document with highlighting, comments, and other features. Below are a few top tasks. Click here to see a full list. All of these are possible to do in both Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Pro. If you need to edit/mark-up/annotate a PDF on a mobile device, you may check this page for a link to apps on the iOS and android platforms.
After clicking the , place the cursor where text should be added directly to the document. Changing the font, point, and color is possible.
Example:
If a word, sentence, or paragraph needs to be highlighted, use the Highlight Text feature.
Click the icon, the highlight the text as you normally would. Once you release the mouse key, the text will be highlighted yellow.
Example:
To leave a sticky note that may be viewed while hovering or in the Comments List, click . Then place the stick note within the document. After to finish your note, it will be visible in the Comments List. You will be able to edit the note by clicking on the text in the Comments List.
Example:
OCR (optical character recognition) - Recognizing text in a pdf yields a number of benefits. Doing so de-skews the document, makes the text searchable, selectable, and readable by a screen reader (JAWS). It is only possible to recognize text in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
To recognize text in a PDF:
PDF optimization reduces file size, decreasing the amount of time the documents take to open and makes them easier to share.
Click here for a video tutorial on how to optimize a PDF.