Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional [OLD VERSION]

by Adobe

Product Features

• Enable anyone using free Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8) to participate in document reviews, fill and save electronic forms offline, and digitally sign documents.
• Combine documents, drawings, and rich media content into a single, polished Adobe PDF document. Optimize file size and arrange files in any order regardless of file type, dimensions, or orientation.
• Send documents for review and track which reviewers have contributed feedback. Compile comments into a single PDF document with one-button ease and sort them by author, date, or page.
• Create Adobe PDF documents with one-button ease from Microsoft Office applications. Windows users can also create Adobe PDF documents from Outlook, Internet Explorer, Project, Visio, Access, Publisher, AutoCAD, and Lotus Notes.
• Combine multiple files as PDF documents in a searchable, sortable PDF package that maintains the individual security settings and digital signatures of each included PDF document.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000IBFP1K
• Item model number: 22020404
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 18, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,694 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #8 in Software > Business & Office > Document Management > Document Tracking & Inventory
  • #28 in Software > Business & Office > Document Management > Document Creation

Product Description

Amazon.com

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional for Windows software enables business professionals to reliably create, combine, and control Adobe PDF documents for easy, more secure distribution, collaboration, and data collection. Protect sensitive information with passwords, permissions, and digital signatures. Enable users of Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8) to participate in document reviews, fill and save forms, and digitally sign documents.

Top reasons to upgrade to Acrobat 8

Create and optimize Adobe PDF documents
Create an Adobe PDF document from Microsoft Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, or any application that prints. Easily convert and optimize documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, websites, and technical drawings into more secure Adobe PDF files that preserve the formatting and integrity of the original files. Share information with anyone using free Adobe Reader software.

Acrobat 8.0 Professional has a new, more intuitive user interface. View larger.

Enable Adobe Reader (version 7.0 or 8) users to participate in document reviews, digitally sign documents, and fill in and save PDF forms. Then organize comments from multiple reviewers with Acrobat's sorting and filtering tools.

Acrobat lets you combine files from multiple applications into a single Adobe PDF document.

Combine files from multiple applications
Easily assemble documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mails, web pages, forms, CAD drawings, and diagrams into a single Adobe PDF document. Present files in your preferred order, regardless of file type, paper size, or orientation. Embed multimedia, 3D designs, audio, and video for a richer experience.

Enhance and extend document collaboration
Accelerate feedback and approvals with robust tools for initiating, managing, and tracking document reviews. Enable Adobe Reader (version 7.0 or 8) users to participate in document reviews with commenting tools. Reviewers can use familiar commenting tools—including sticky notes, stamps, highlighter, pencil, strikethrough, callout, dimension lines, shapes, and clouds—for review and markup of Adobe PDF files. Merge feedback into a single PDF file to reconcile comments.

Streamline data collection with Adobe PDF forms
Automate manual entry and help reduce costly errors by managing information electronically with PDF forms. Easily create a wide range of electronic forms for distribution through e-mail or on the web. Enable users of free Adobe Reader (version 7.0 or 8) to fill and save forms (for ad-hoc forms distribution and data collection for up to 500 people.). Capture and consolidate inbound data into spreadsheets or back-end systems.

Apply advanced document security and controls
Control access to and use of Adobe PDF documents, assign digital rights, and maintain document integrity. Set document permissions to define whether a file can be printed or changed. Apply passwords to help restrict document access. Digitally sign and certify documents to validate they came from a trusted source. Create and reuse document control policies to precisely manage who can print, save, copy, or modify a document.

Top reasons to buy Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

• Enable advanced features in Adobe Reader — Enable anyone using free Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8) to participate in document reviews, fill and save electronic forms offline, and digitally sign documents.
• Combine and optimize documents — Combine documents, drawings, and rich media content into a single, polished Adobe PDF document. Optimize file size and arrange files in any order regardless of file type, dimensions, or orientation.
• Accelerate document reviews — Send documents for review and track which reviewers have contributed feedback. Compile comments into a single PDF document with one-button ease and sort them by author, date, or page.
• Save in Microsoft Word — Save Adobe PDF files as Microsoft Word documents, retaining the layout, fonts, formatting, and tables, to facilitate reuse of content.

With a scanner and Acrobat's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, you can turn stacks of paper documents into easily searchable electronic PDF archives.

• Create advanced forms — Design dynamic, interactive forms to collect and aggregate data through email or on the web with included Adobe LiveCycle Designer software.
• Easily create Adobe PDF documents — Create Adobe PDF documents with one-button ease from Microsoft Office applications. Windows users can also create Adobe PDF documents from Outlook, Internet Explorer, Project, Visio, Access, Publisher, AutoCAD, and Lotus Notes.
• Apply passwords and assign permissions — Restrict access to Adobe PDF documents using 128-bit encryption. Set document permissions to help restrict who can print, save, copy, or modify a document.
• Permanently remove sensitive information — Permanently remove metadata, hidden layers, and other concealed information, and use redaction tools to permanently delete sensitive text, illustrations, or other content.
• Archive papers and e-mails for easy search and retrieval — Scan paper documents with OCR technology to create compact, searchable Adobe PDF documents. Convert Microsoft Outlook e-mail archives to Adobe PDF to facilitate search and retrieval.
• Generate professional, print-ready files — Automate the preflight process and correct issues that might compromise print quality without creating a new Adobe PDF document.

Top reasons to upgrade to Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

• Combine multiple files into one PDF package — Combine multiple files as PDF documents in a searchable, sortable PDF package that maintains the individual security settings and digital signatures of each included PDF document.
• Auto-recognize form fields — Automatically locate form fields in static PDF documents and convert them to interactive fields that can be filled electronically by anyone using Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8).

Digitally sign and certify documents to validate they came from a trusted source.

• Manage shared reviews — Easily conduct shared reviews — without IT assistance — that allow review participants to see one another's comments and track the status of the review.
• Enable advanced features in Adobe Reader — Enable anyone using free Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8) to fill and save electronic forms offline and digitally sign documents.
• Permanently remove sensitive information — Permanently remove metadata, hidden layers, and other concealed information, and use redaction tools to permanently delete sensitive text, illustrations, or other content.
• Archive Microsoft Outlook e-mail in PDF — Configure Acrobat 8 Professional to automatically archive e-mail in Microsoft Outlook for easy search and retrieval.
• Archive Lotus Notes e-mail — Convert e-mail in Lotus Notes to Adobe PDF to facilitate searching, archiving, and retrieval.
• Save in Microsoft Word — Take advantage of improved functionality for saving Adobe PDF files as Microsoft Word documents, retaining the layout, fonts, formatting, and tables.
• Enjoy improved performance and support for AutoCAD — More rapidly convert AutoCAD drawing files into compact, accurate PDF documents, without the need for the native desktop application.
• Take advantage of a new, intuitive user interface — Complete tasks more quickly with a streamlined user interface, new customizable toolbars, and a "Getting Started" page to visually direct you to commonly used features.

Product Feature Comparison	Acrobat 8 Standard	Acrobat 8 Professional
Create PDF documents with one-button ease from Microsoft Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Access, and Publisher as well as Lotus Notes (Windows only)	x	x
Combine files from multiple applications into a single PDF document	x	x
Conduct collaborative document reviews that allow review participants to see one another’s comments	x	x
Protect PDF documents with passwords and 128-bit encryption	x	x
Enable Adobe Reader (version 7.0 or 8) users to participate in document reviews, digitally sign documents, and fill and save PDF forms (for ad-hoc forms distribution and data collection for up to 500 people)		x
Create PDF documents with one-button ease from AutoCAD, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Project (Windows only)		x
Quickly and easily create high-quality, compact PDF files from AutoCAD designs that preserve layers, scale, page layout, and page size (Windows only)		x
Create advanced Adobe PDF forms with included Adobe LiveCycle Designer software (Windows only)		x

Product Description

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software enables business professionals to reliably create, combine, and control Adobe PDF documents for easy, more secure distribution, collaboration, and data collection. Combine files from multiple applications, collaborate on documents via e-mail or server, and collect information with electronic forms. Protect sensitive information with passwords and permissions. Enable users of Adobe Reader software (version 7.0 or 8) to participate in document reviews, fill and save forms, and digitally sign documents.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good release, a bit glitchy though and more bloated than ever., January 11, 2007

By 

K. Osborne (Mentor, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Adobe comes out and delivers another fine Acrobat product. While I purchased this for the sole purpose of creating PDFs and forms we could email our customers, have them fill out, save and email back, the brief touches I've had with the automatic form generators have left me impressed. The user interface is well thought out and clean which is a touchy subject for me personally as a programmer who specializes in UI design. Everything is movable, hide-able and customizable in a new sharp looking set of toolbars that should feel right at home in Windows Vista.

But, while it's a fine product that loads quickly thanks to a pre-loader when Windows starts, it does suffer from it's share of problems. The new user interface, while fancy, is glitchy, and has crashed out the software on more than one occasion. Simple innocuous tasks such as dragging a form element into alignment can suddenly leave you staring dumbfounded at your desktop as Windows defends itself from some index out of bounds fault. Is it entirely stable? No, but sadly, it's up to par with 99% of the industry's X.0 release software standards; which means it's 98% usable, but don't hand your boss an unpadded deadline that doesn't take into account a few crashes here and there.

Finally, yes, while the price of RAM continues to decrease, the memory (and hard disk) footprint of software continues to increase to obscene levels. Make sure your office equipment is on the more modern side because it'll take up 20meg+ of your RAM just when the computer starts; which is in this IT professional's opinion, a hefty price to pay just to look at PDFs in my web browser or on my hard drive without a 20 second load-up delay. Load it up and create a PDF of a simple Word 2003 document that contains only a page of text, and task manager tells you it's now eating up 50 meg. In short, it won't run well on the bargain-basement Intel Celeron, 256meg Windows XP machine.

As a final note for those who aren't heavily into IT looking to buy this product for their small office, you need to be connected to the internet when this is installed and be absolutely sure you install it on the computer it's going to permanently reside on. Like most expensive modern business software, Acrobat requires an activation in the name of Digital Rights Management that records it's serial number and the hardware ID of the computer it's installed on and keeps it on file at Adobe. One copy of the software will let you install it on exactly one machine. Try to install it on another machine (even if the original machine got obsoleted, kicked the bucket or transferred to different personnel), and you'll be met with a "this is already installed, please buy another copy" message. DRM forces forethought in these modern times.

Overall, it's excellent software, and for the faults I listed, I still give it 4 stars because it's an extremely solid product that'll work hard for you. Expect the crashing issues to clear up as Adobe silently releases 8.0.1 and onward as free patches that will be downloaded automatically thanks to Adobe's built-in upgrade manager. While executives balked at the idea of office personnel with 1 gig of RAM in a common desktops a year ago, in reality, that's the working minimum these days for your office's power users who may have eight things open and/or running at once. It's a $50 upgrade that to a power user, saves about 5 minutes of worktime on every hour of computer use. Do the math and get them the tools they need because software like this won't be getting less bloated anytime soon.

Finally, if all you're looking at is to create PDF files, there are many smaller, cheaper programs out there that can easily do the task. You might want to hit up Google and investigate further.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars FUBAR, October 12, 2007

By 

Diego Banducci (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Software that repeatedly crashes and requires multiple reloadings deserves NO STARS, but amazon does not allow that option, so this gets 1 star.

Having owned versions 4, 5, 6 and now 8, I've watched this product add features, and with them glitches. Would it be a great product if it worked? Yes. Unfortunately, it crashes, and crashes and crashes.

Adobe has already issued two update fixes, but still it crashes.

Not good.

UPDATE: Since writing the above, I have purchased a new HP desktop and Acrobat generally works on it. The major exceptions are the actions listed under the Document tab, especially Reduce File Size, which simply crashes as soon as you click on it. For anyone who stores large files, this is a significant defect.

My old computer (a Gateway) was about five years old. Both computers run on Windows XP, so the operating system is not the cause of the crashes.

2nd UPDATE: Today [02/06/08] Adobe released Ver. 8.1.2. It's still screwed up.

3rd UPDATE 02/23/08: There is an alternative on the horizon, PDF Converter Professional 5.0 by Nuance Communications, which sells OmniPage 16 Professional. Nuance has an ugly history of selling software before its time (i.e., using early purchasers as beta sites), but it's the only real alternative I've been able to find. There are other shareware programs, but they don't have the functionality of Adobe Acrobat 8.

UPDATE #4 02/26/08: Well, it looks like PDF Converter Professional 5 also lacks the functionality of Adobe Acrobat 8. I went to Nuance's website and downloaded the new version, only to find that it lacks support for scanners. (This is strange because Nuance's flagship product, Omnipage, does include support for scanners.) It does, however, include features for inserting, extracting, replacing, deleting, cropping and rotating pages, which I had been having trouble with in Adobe. In its promotional materials, Nuance claims that it will create headers and footers, but I see no evidence of that.

UPDATE #5 07/28/08: This will be my final update, since Adobe has released Adobe Acrobat Professional 9. I bought a copy yesterday and have just begun using it. It seems not to suffer from the flaws that afflicted Acrobat 8, but we'll see.

The clear lesson of all of this is that Adobe releases poorly written and documented software, treating its customers as beta testers. Caveat Emptor.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bloated and Unstable, July 3, 2007

By 

E. D. Freeman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Another bloated, greedy and unstable piece of software from Adobe. Software whos auto-update feature caused my entire software suite to crash as Adobe burrows into everything for Word and Outlook to Internet Exploiter and Explorer. Here's the kicker, the Adobe software won't let you uninstall or reinstall, generating a consistent error that is not documented on Adobes website. And if you even bother to try their customer support line, find a comfortable chair and make a drink, you're gonna need it.