New features summary | March 2024 release of Acrobat

Action wizard in new Acrobat

Action wizard allows you to create and manage actions and commands to run across numerous documents with a single click.

When you apply one or more routine commands to your files, you can save time and keystrokes by using an action—a defined series of commands with specific settings and in a specific order that you apply in a single step. You can apply an action to a single document, several documents, or an entire collection of documents. You can even scan and combine several documents into a single PDF before running an action.

To access the feature, select All tools > Use guided actions. 

In the Use guided actions toolbar, you can use any tool per your requirement.

Add shortcut or favorite tools in Modern Acrobat

You can now add shortcuts or mark your favorite tools in Modern Acrobat. An enterprise admin can add shortcuts or favorite tools, and only those tools will appear in the All-tools panel, and the rest will appear under View More. Enterprise Admins can modify the settings using the Customization Wizard. 

The All tools panel will show default tools in the Default configuration of Customization Wizard. Users should continue to be able to change the order of the tools. 

The admin can disable customization of the shortcut tools for existing users. This should restrict the user from being able to change the order or list of the tools. 

For existing users with favorite tools modified in classic, when the user switches to Modern Acrobat for the first time, the favorites should persist in all tools pane in Modern Acrobat.

Manually sync comments on your shared files in Acrobat desktop

You can now manually sync comments on your shared files in Acrobat desktop. The feature improves cloud syncing and makes sure, your document is up to date. 

To initiate cloud syncing or check the status of your last sync, follow the steps:

Hover over the cloud icon in the upper right above the comments pane to check your last synced status.

Select the cloud icon to begin syncing if the last sync status does not reflect the latest updates. Once the cloud sync completes, you get these statuses respectively:

• New comments: A message appears showing that there are new comments.
• No new comments: A message appears showing that there are no recent comments.
• Server failure: If there is a server failure and the files cannot be synced, you will see a message showing that there was a processing error; try again after some time. 
• If you are offline: A message appears showing that you’re offline. Please connect to the internet to sync this file. 

No extra spaces in the comment section

Acrobat removes extra spaces at the start and end of the comment. Extra spaces get added sometimes while comments are added to a document. It may be due to copying information with spaces or unintentionally adding space while adding a comment. The extra spaces make comments look long, and readers might find it difficult to read and scroll through the comment section.

Quickly reply to a comment through the contextual menu

You can now quickly reply to a comment through the contextual menu.

The contextual menu also gives you options to change the colour of the highlight/comment or delete the comment entirely.

Sticky notes in your PDFs can now open contextual menu. Select any sticky note in your document, the contextual menu pops up.

Unified Avatars across all components in Acrobat

With this release, you get consistent profile Avatars across Acrobat. Your profile avatars will be consistent across all components, such as the sign-in pane, comments pane, and top bar. 

Perform Spelling checks on your document in Adobe Acrobat

With this release, Acrobat brings an automatic spelling check feature for your document. Once you open your document in Acrobat, the spell check feature will automatically scan the document in the background to check for spelling errors.

If any spelling errors are found in the document, you see a dialog box in the lower right informing you about the errors and a button to see the errors.

Once you select See errors, the Edit panel opens up, and you see all the misspelled words with a red underline. If you select the misspelled words or right-click the misspelled words, you see:

• Three top dictionary suggestions – Select any suggested word to replace your misspelled word. 
• Ignore all - Remove highlight on all instances of the misspelled word from the document.
• Add to the dictionary - Add misspelled words to the dictionary and remove highlight on all instances of the misspelled word from the document.

Set spelling check preferences

You can adjust spelling check preferences as per your need from the Preferences section in Acrobat. You can opt out of the feature if you don't want Acrobat to show your spelling errors.

Alternatively, you can go to Preferences in Acrobat. In the Preferences dialog box in Acrobat, select Spelling from the left pane, and then uncheck the Show spelling errors options.

Stylize your scanned PDF files in Acrobat using Adobe Express

Adobe Acrobat now supports transforming scanned PDF files into Adobe Express projects to stylize and edit your PDFs and make them look professional.

To convert your scanned PDF files into Adobe Express projects:

Open your scanned PDF file in Acrobat. From the All Tools panel on the left, select Enhance this PDF.

Your PDF gets converted into an Adobe Express project, and you can begin stylizing or personalizing your PDF.

Alternatively, select Edit from the top left and then Enhance this PDF from the Design tools pane on the left.

Your PDF gets converted into Adobe express project and you can begin enhancing your PDF.

You can also open your scanned PDF in Express using the Convert menu. Select Convert from the top-left. Then select Adobe Express from the left pane.

Apply color theme to your PDF

Make your PDF’s theme consistent by applying pre-set colors to your PDF background, text, and shapes in Adobe Express.

Select Edit from the top left, then select Apply color theme from the Design tools on the left.

Digital signature in Modern Acrobat

The Adobe Acrobat Sign Digital Signature field is now available in Modern Acrobat.

Digital Signatures are a type of Electronic Signature that uses a certificate-based Digital ID obtained from a cloud-based trust service provider or the signer's local system.

To send a document for digital signature:

Content Search Enables Automatic Keyword Navigation

With this release, Acrobat helps you automatically navigate to the searched keyword in a document.

Once you open a file from the search result, which is a part of content search, Acrobat automatically opens the find tool, pre-fills the searched keyword, and navigates to the keyword you searched for initially.

You can use the navigation buttons in the find tool to search for more keyword occurrences in your document.

This enhancement minimally impacts existing functionalities and extends across various sections within Homepage search results, including non-shared, view, and review files.

Sandbox on Mac (Acrobat Reader)

Increased security to user data provided by app-sandbox technology. Sandboxing in Acrobat for macOS ensures that Acrobat operates within a secure sandbox environment that limits access to your computer's resources. This means that tasks like processing PDF content and images, executing JavaScript, rendering fonts and 3D elements occur within this controlled environment. If a PDF file is potentially harmful and attempts to access your computer's resources, the sandbox prevents such access, safeguarding your system from any potential damage. Additionally, the sandbox restricts actions like reading from or writing to the disk and accessing files and network connections, further enhancing security.

Admins can configure the sandboxing settings pre- or post-deployment. Admins can lock the feature so that end users cannot change application behavior or control the features through the user interface.

To turn on app sandboxing:

Go to Acrobat Reader > Preferences > Security (Enhanced) > Sandbox protections. Then, select the feature controls as needed.

Outlook plugin in Acrobat Reader

You can use Adobe Acrobat plug-in for Outlook to send large files as public links through Outlook. The attached files are uploaded to Adobe Cloud storage, and public links to the files are inserted in the email body.

Recipients can select the link to preview the file in a browser window and can download the file if needed.

For more info, refer to Adobe Acrobat Reader for Outlook.