Chapter 4: Acrobat Keyboard Shortcuts

Acrobat provides keyboard shortcuts for a wide range of operations that you re likely to perform in a day s work ”from creating, opening, and saving files through changing the view to activating tools and selecting text. You ll still need to use the mouse at times, but you can get a lot of your work done from the keyboard if you know the right keyboard shortcuts.

Creating, Opening, Saving, Closing, and Printing Files

We ll start (as usual) with the keyboard shortcuts you re almost certain to need: those for creating new files, opening existing files, saving files, closing files, and printing them.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating and Opening Files

Windows [Ctrl]-[N], Mac [ z ]-[N]

Display the Open dialog box

This shortcut is an alternative to the File Create PDF From File command. In the Open dialog box, select the file from which you want to create the PDF file, and then click the Open button. Acrobat creates a new PDF file from the file you specify. Save the file when you re ready.

Windows [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[O], Mac [ z ]-[Shift]-[O]

Display the Create PDF From Web Page dialog box

In the Create PDF From Web Page dialog box (the Mac version is shown here), specify the URL of the web page (for example, by typing it or browsing to it), choose suitable settings (for example, whether to get multiple levels, or to get the entire site), and then click the Create button to create a PDF from the page.

Windows [Ctrl]-[O], Mac [ z ]-[O]

Display the Open dialog box

Select the file you want to open, and then click the Open button.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Closing and Saving Files, and Quitting Acrobat

Windows [Ctrl]-[W], [Ctrl]-[F4], Mac [Ctrl]-[W]

Close the active file

If the file contains unsaved changes, Acrobat prompts you to save them.

Windows [Ctrl]-[S], Mac [ z ]-[S]

Save the active file

If the active file hasn t been saved before, Acrobat displays the Save As dialog box so that you can specify the folder and the filename under which to save it. Thereafter, if the file contains unsaved changes, Acrobat saves them under the current filename. If the active file doesn t contain any unsaved changes, the Save command is unavailable, and this keyboard shortcut has no effect.

Windows [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[S], Mac [ z ]-[Shift]-[S]

Display the Save As dialog box

Use the Save As dialog box to save the active document under a different name , in a different folder, in a different format, or a combination of the three. When you save in a different format, you can choose further settings by clicking the Settings button and working in the resulting Save As Settings dialog box.

Windows [Ctrl]-[Q], [Alt]-[F4], Mac [Ctrl]-[Q]

Quit Acrobat

Keyboard Shortcuts for Displaying Document Properties

Windows [Ctrl]-[D], Mac [ z ]-[D]

Display the Document Properties dialog box

On both Windows and the Mac, you can navigate quickly from category to category in the Document Properties dialog box by pressing 3 and 4 or by typing the first letter of the category you want to display: [A] displays the Advanced category, [C] displays the Custom category, and so on.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Page Setup and Printing

Windows [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[P], Mac [ z ]-[Shift]-[P]

Display the Print Setup dialog box

Windows [Ctrl]-[P], Mac [ z ]-[P]

Display the Print dialog box

Windows [Ctrl]-[T], Mac [ z ]-[T]

Issue a Print With Comments command

When you issue a Print With Comments command, Acrobat displays the Summarize Options dialog box (the Windows version is shown here), in which you choose which comments to include, where to print them, and how large to make them. After you click the OK button to close the Summarize Options dialog box, Acrobat displays the Print dialog box.

Windows [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[P]

Display the PrintMe Networks dialog box for Internet printing