Customer Reviews

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional Upgrade from Standard Version 4-7 [Old Version]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

That's right if you have fillable forms created in a previous version and expect to change them, your out of luck. I thought compatibility was the cornerstone of Acrobat.

Our firm does over $300 Million worth of business a year. We thought that Acrobat Professional ability to create fillable forms that could be shared, updated, and filled out by clients was a blessing. We not have dozens of worthless forms. And then there's the embarrassment when a client with Acrobat 7 can't fill out a form. THINK OF THE COST!

Adobe's site doesn't even mention the issue (although, their site search and help system is so poor that it may be their somewhere - who knows.)

At first, I thought I was doing something wrong. But, when I called support I was told that forms were not compatible. The service person then told me that she thought there might be a fix. However, without a service plan we'd have to pay to talk to Technical Support. We paid good money for this software (we buy multiple licenses) and only had this version for two days.

Considering the magnitude of this issue. I'm guessing there are other major problems with this release of Acrobat..

Adobe should fire its entire staff of software developers and the arrogant managers who let this software hit the market without providing fully functional compatibility.

So far, I'm very pleased with this upgrade from my Adobe Acrobat Standard 6.0 to Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0. The installation process went flawlessly and everything still works. Also, this version seems to start up MUCH faster than the previous version. It might be due to the "Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher" which is now in my XP Home Startup Group, but since that doesn't seem to lengthen my Windows boot process, it's transparent, and welcome, to me. A couple of other very welcome changes are that 1) Acrobat appears to have linked into Windows Explorer: using the Thumbnail view, Windows Explorer now displays the first page of PDFs instead of just the generic Acrobat logo, and 2) the Organizer tool gives Acrobat the ability to do some PDF-related document management. Combined, these two capabilities might give enough functionality to let me stop using Scansoft's PaperPort for my document management needs and just use Acrobat. I'll keep looking into it.

UPDATE: After working with Acrobat as my PDF document manager for about a week and having gone through its entire help file (793 pages), I've decided to use it instead of my previous Scansoft PaperPort 9/OmniPage Pro 14 setup. It's not the best in the world, but it's workable. My document management needs are simple: I need to scan in my receipts and account statements to PDF format, OCR them so they're searchable, and manage them so I can find them. For various reasons that are unimportant here, Scansoft has irritated me into trying alternatives: Adobe Acrobat appears to be it. I can use Acrobat's Create PDF function to scan my documents and OCR them. I can then use its Organizer to see those PDFs in one of three ways: 1) grouped under various History folders, 2) organized into a directory tree with options to set up Favorite folders, or 3) in various collections that I can produce which include links to documents of my choice. For text searching across my disk, I still use Copernic Desktop Search (free) as I did with Scansoft (though I could set up a Search Index in Acrobat, instead). My only complaints are that 1) the scanning/OCR process is slower in Acrobat since it opens and closes my scanner's interface for each page (instead of leaving it open), 2) Acrobat's OCR results aren't as accurate as Scansoft's, and 3) if I scan to a Searchable Image, Acrobat doesn't give me an opportunity to correct Suspect words. If I scan to Formatted Text & Graphics, I can edit Suspect words, but I end up with Acrobat's attempt to recreate the document instead of an actual picture of it with searchable text hidden behind it. Oh, well. I can live with that since it will allow me to get rid of two applications and the PDF it produces is about half the size of what I was getting with Scansoft.

For those interested, my upgrade process is below:

The first thing I did was uninstall my previous copy of Acrobat (version 6, standard). I did this through Start | Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs and uninstalled all the Acrobat stuff in the reverse order I installed it. I then rebooted (just to be sure) and ran this version's SETUP program. After I entered this version's serial number, it asked me for my previous version's CD for verification (it also gave me the option of verifying my upgrade status by phoning Adobe). I put the CD in the drive, it recognized it, and finished the installation. It then prompted me to activate the product over the internet (which I did without problem). Again, just to be sure, I rebooted (which wasn't necessary), and started up Acrobat. It immediately prompted me to register via the internet (which I did without problem) and asked if I wanted it to automatically check for critical updates. I said "yes" and it went out and got the current 7.0.1 update. I installed that, rebooted (not necessary), and was up and running. I started up all my programs which might use Acrobat files, opened a few of them, and all looks good.

Even though Acrobat's OCR process isn't as accurate or as fast as I'd hoped, everything else looks good. So, I'm giving the product a rating of 5 stars out of 5.

Acrobat 7 introduces much new functionality in both document review and forms creation. I found the document review functionality to be very well done and very powerfull. It has great depth as a review and markup tool. It is in the area of forms creation with Designer 7 that I found problems. First I found much of the information misleading. I was interested in some specific functionality that PRO was supposed to turn on for Viewer only users. After activating that functionality and finding that it still didn't work with Viewer, I learned that it wasn't just the PRO version of Acrobat that was needed but another Adobe server product costing tens of thousands of dollars. Kind of like giving someone a key to the bank when everything of value is stored in the vault. The second issue was one of speed. I took an existing form created in MS Word and converted it to Acrobat. That process worked well but when I added dynamic elements things slowed to a crawl. Dynamic elements are things like, areas that expaned as users type or checkboxes that show or hide form areas as needed. Everything worked, but some elements took 10 seconds to refresh on a 2.4 gig computer. Lastly a warning about the new file format used by Acrobat 7. The forms functionality provided by Designer 7 changes the Acrobat format into an entirely new file type. As such that new file type does not work with many (any ?) exiting Acrobat compatible server products. In fact it even prevents Acrobat Pro 7 from doing things like batch combining of Acrobat files. Time will most probably solve both the speed and compatibility issues. I just wish that software manufactures would provide a document showing the pluses and minus offered when upgrading to a major new release like Acrobat 7.

I used this program for several months without serious issue. I then started getting an error message "your computers configuration has changed, you must reactivate". My computers configuration had not changed, but I reactivated anyway. After reactivating 3 times, I got the error "maximum number of activations exceeded". The program the ceased to function altogether. After many hours on the phone with technical support (in India or Pakistan, I was told to buy a new version of the program. That would be like throwing good money after bad. You will be better off without this software.

I upgraded from Acrobat version 5.0 and used this software successfully for over three years. No problems whatsoever. Highly recommend!

David,
I'd be real interested in your experience with the Organizer tool and document management. Thanks. You can also email me at LHouseman@HousemanSeeligson(no spam).com