- Acrobat User Guide
- Introduction to Acrobat
- Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
- Introducing the new Acrobat experience
- What's new in Acrobat
- Keyboard shortcuts
- System Requirements
- Download Adobe Acrobat
- Download Acrobat | Enterprise term or VIP license
- Download Acrobat 64-bit for Windows
- Install Adobe Acrobat Reader | Windows
- Install Adobe Acrobat Reader | Mac OS
- Install updates for Acrobat and Reader
- Update your Acrobat to the latest version
- Download Acrobat 2020
- Release Notes | Acrobat, Reader
- Workspace
- Workspace basics
- Opening and viewing PDFs
- Working with online storage accounts
- Acrobat and macOS
- Acrobat notifications
- Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
- Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
- Adobe Acrobat for Outlook
- Set Acrobat as default PDF viewer
- Explore Acrobat tools
- Workspace basics
- Creating PDFs
- Editing PDFs
- Edit text in PDFs
- Edit images or objects in a PDF
- Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
- Edit scanned PDFs
- Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
- Optimizing PDFs
- PDF properties and metadata
- Links and attachments in PDFs
- PDF layers
- Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
- PDFs converted to web pages
- Setting up PDFs for a presentation
- PDF articles
- Geospatial PDFs
- Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
- Change the default font for adding text
- Delete pages from a PDF
- Edit a signed PDF | FAQ
- Scan and OCR
- Forms
- PDF forms basics
- Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
- Create and distribute PDF forms
- Fill in PDF forms
- PDF form field properties
- Fill and sign PDF forms
- Setting action buttons in PDF forms
- Publishing interactive PDF web forms
- PDF form field basics
- PDF barcode form fields
- Collect and manage PDF form data
- About forms tracker
- PDF forms help
- Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
- Combining files
- Combine or merge files into single PDF
- Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
- Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
- Crop PDF pages
- Add watermarks to PDFs
- Add backgrounds to PDFs
- Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
- Publish and share PDF Portfolios
- Overview of PDF Portfolios
- Create and customize PDF Portfolios
- Sharing, reviews, and commenting
- Share and track PDFs online
- Mark up text with edits
- Preparing for a PDF review
- Starting a PDF review
- Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
- Participating in a PDF review
- Add comments to PDFs
- Adding a stamp to a PDF
- Approval workflows
- Managing comments | view, reply, print
- Importing and exporting comments
- Tracking and managing PDF reviews
- Saving and exporting PDFs
- Security
- Enhanced security setting for PDFs
- Securing PDFs with passwords
- Manage Digital IDs
- Securing PDFs with certificates
- Opening secured PDFs
- Removing sensitive content from PDFs
- Setting up security policies for PDFs
- Choosing a security method for PDFs
- Security warnings when a PDF opens
- Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
- Protected View feature for PDFs
- Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
- JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
- Attachments as security risks
- Allow or block links in PDFs
- Edit secured PDFs
- Electronic signatures
- Sign PDF documents
- Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
- Send documents for e-signatures
- Create a web form
- Request e-signatures in bulk
- Collect online payments
- Brand your account
- About certificate signatures
- Certificate-based signatures
- Validating digital signatures
- Adobe Approved Trust List
- Manage trusted identities
- Printing
- Accessibility, tags, and reflow
- Searching and indexing
- Multimedia and 3D models
- Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
- Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
- Displaying 3D models in PDFs
- Interacting with 3D models
- Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
- Setting 3D views in PDFs
- Enable 3D content in PDF
- Adding multimedia to PDFs
- Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
- Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
- Add comments to videos
- Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
- Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
- PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
- Preflight profiles
- Advanced preflight inspections
- Preflight reports
- Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
- Output intents in PDFs
- Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
- Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
- Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
- Additional checks in the Preflight tool
- Preflight libraries
- Preflight variables
- Color management
- Troubleshoot
- Troubleshoot PDF printing in Acrobat and Acrobat Reader
- Adobe Acrobat license has either expired or not been activated
- Edit PDF forms created in LiveCycle Designer
- Insufficient data for an image error on Adobe Acrobat
- Resolve errors related to the AcroCEF/RdrCEF processes of Acrobat or Acrobat Reader
What’s the best way to create a PDF?
You can create PDFs from documents printed on paper, Microsoft Word documents, InDesign® files, digital images, and more. Different types of sources have different tools available for PDF conversion. In many applications, you can create PDFs by selecting the Adobe PDF printer in the Print dialog box.
If a file is open in its authoring application (such as a spreadsheet that is open in Microsoft Excel), you can convert it to PDF without opening Adobe Acrobat. Similarly, if Acrobat is already open, you don’t have to open the authoring application to convert a file to PDF.
Every PDF balances efficiency (small file size) and quality (such as resolution and color). If the balance between the file size and the quality is critical to your task, you must use an appropriate conversion method.
For example, you can drag files to the Acrobat icon to create PDFs. In this case, Acrobat applies the most recently used conversion settings without providing access to those settings. If you want more control over the process, you’ll want to use another method.
PDF creation methods by file type
Refer to the following lists to determine the methods available for the different types of files.
| File Type | PDF Creation Methods |
|---|---|
| Any file format | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create. Then, select a file type and then select the file that you want to convert to PDF. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop a file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. Method 3: Right-click on the file and then select Convert to Adobe PDF. Method 4: Open the file in its source application and go to Print > Adobe PDF printer. |
| Paper documents (Requires a scanner) | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create. Then, select Scanner as the file type, select the scanner, and follow through the steps or browse to locate a pre-scanned page. Or, select the hamburger menu |
| Microsoft Office documents | Method 1 (Windows only): From the authoring application toolbar, select Adobe Acrobat > Create and Share Adobe PDF. Method 2 (Windows only): Open the file in its source application and then go to Print > Adobe PDF printer. Method 3 (Windows only): Right-click on the file and select Convert to Adobe PDF. Method 4: Drag and drop the file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. Method 5 (macOS only): From the authoring application, select File > Print > PDF > Save as Adobe PDF. |
| Email messages | Method 1 (Windows only): Within Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, select Acrobat PDFMaker or select Adobe PDF menu options (Outlook) or the Actions menu (Lotus Notes). Method 2 (Windows only): From the email application, go to Print > Adobe PDF Create a PDF (not a PDF Portfolio). Method 3 (Outlook 2010 or later): From the email folder or selection of messages, right-click and then select Convert to Adobe PDF. |
| Web pages | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create. Then, select Web page as the file type and follow through the steps. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop the HTML file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. Method 3: Right-click on the file and then select Convert to Adobe PDF. Method 4: From the top-right corner of the webpage, select |
| Content copied on the clipboard | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create. Then, select Clipboard as the file type and follow through the steps. Or, select the hamburger menu |
| AutoCAD files (Acrobat Pro for Windows only) | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create and then select the file. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop the HTML file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. Method 3: Right-click the file and select Convert to Adobe PDF. Method 4: Within AutoCAD, go to Print > Adobe PDF. |
| Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign files | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create a PDF and then select the file. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop the file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. |
| PostScript and EPS files | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create and then select the file. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop the file from your system to the Acrobat Distiller icon or Acrobat Distiller window. |
| 3D files (Acrobat Pro) | Method 1: From the top tools bar, select Create and then select the file. Or, select the hamburger menu Method 2: Drag and drop the HTML file from your system to the Acrobat Home page. Method 3: From Microsoft PowerPoint, select Adobe Presenter > Publish. |
(Windows) or the File menu (macOS) > Create and then select the appropriate file type and follow through the steps. 
> Print > Adobe PDF.Balance PDF file size and quality
You can select various settings to ensure that your PDF has the best balance between file size, resolution, conformity to specific standards, and other factors. The settings you select depend on your goals for the PDF that you are creating. For example, a PDF intended for high-quality commercial printing requires different settings than a PDF intended only for onscreen viewing and quick downloading over the Internet.
Once selected, these settings apply across PDFMaker, Acrobat, and Acrobat Distiller. However, some settings are limited to specific contexts or file types. For example, PDFMaker options can vary among the different types of Microsoft Office applications.
For convenience, you can select one of the conversion presets available in Acrobat. You can also create, define, save, and reuse custom presets that are uniquely suited to your purposes.
For scanned documents, you can choose from Autodetect Color Mode or several scanning presets that are optimized for scanning documents and images in color or black and white. You can modify these presets or use your own custom scanning settings.
Try these online PDF tools: convert Word to PDF, convert Excel to PDF, convert PowerPoint to PDF, convert JPG to PDF
