Category Archives: Software

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Creating and Using and Index in Adobe Acrobat

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Recently I posted about an article I had published in Chicago Lawyer Magazine about using Adobe Acrobat as part of my legal research workflow. I have received a couple of questions relating to the article relating to which version of Acrobat you need and how to create an index so that the research is searchable.

With respect to the question of what version of Acrobat is needed, that depends largely on what you want to do with the research that you have. If what you are concerned with is reading your research and annotating it any of the paid versions of Adobe Acrobat will work fine. Please note that the free Adobe Reader will not work for this. You must have one of the paid versions. Alternatively, a program such as NitroPDF would work just fine for this as well. In fact, I find Nitro’s commenting and mark-up tools easy to use than Acrobat’s.

However, if you wish to make your research fully searchable by creating an index that spans multiple files or multiple folders, you will need either Acrobat Pro or Pro Extended. These allow you to create a very powerful index. Doing so is actually quite simple. Further, Rick Borstein has already done all of the work of demonstrating how to do this.

In a blog post from a couple of years ago, Rick explains how to create an index in Adobe Acrobat. Although the instructions provided are for Acrobat 8, they also appear to be the same to create an index in Acrobat 9.

Additionally, for those who learn best by watching, Rick has some how-to videos to talk about search options in Acrobat. In particular, he has one that talks about the differences between Find and Search and one that demonstrates how to build a full text index.

As you can see from Rick’s post and demo, creating an index is an easy thing to do. Further, it can certainly aid you when you want to search through your PDFs, whether they relate to legal research or not.

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Formatting With Style

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Few things drive me more crazy than trying to work on a document that someone else has created. This is because very few people understand how to use styles in Microsoft Word and instead try to format everything using the formatting buttons on their formatting toolbar.

I am glad to see that I am not the only person disturbed by this problem. Writing, Clear and Simple, addressed this problem head-on recently. The author explained the problem as follows:

I frequently collaborate on projects with several different people, exchanging documents to review and revise. And all too often, I see documents where all of the formatting—bold, italic, font, type size, and so on— has been set manually. That’s the hard way to do it. It’s like having a woodworking shop full of expensive equipment at your disposal, but building a cabinet using only a hatchet.

He could not be more right. I see people do this all of the time. The main cause of this problem, in my opinion, is a lack of training. People don’t know they are supposed to use styles instead of the formatting tools on the formatting bar. Besides, those tools on the formatting bar are so convenient.

In his post, Roy points you toward some resources for learning how to use and modify styles. Additionally, I have written a series of posts on the issue as well.

Some of you may be wondering why this is so important. Or, as I am often asked, “What’s the big deal?”

The answer is simple and Roy nails is perfectly:

You should be focusing your attention on the content, on making sure the words say what you want them to say, and here you are, fiddling with the cosmetics, wasting precious time making the document look pretty.

Once you spend a little time putting your styles together, you never have to worry about formatting again. You simply apply the approriate style and go on. You can concentrate on the writing without having to worry about whether the document will look good.

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Nitro PDF Pro 5.5

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Not long ago, I noted that I had a review of Nitro PDF Pro published by the ABA’s Law Technology News. One of the products I reviewed was Nitro PDF Pro 5.5.  I just received word that version 6 has recently been released. You can see a list of the upgrades here.

I think Nitro is a great PDF option. The major quibble I had with version 5 were that it lacked an OCR engine. I have looked through the upgrade information and I do not see that an OCR engine was added to this version. Can anyone confirm or correct me on this point?

Below is a copy of the review I recently did.

Nitro PDF Professional 5.5

Slowly but steadily attorneys are moving into the digital world and using more electronic documents. For many of us, that means that we are using, manipulating, or otherwise handling PDF documents on a daily basis.

For years, the gold standard for handing PDFs has been Adobe Acrobat. Further, in the legal world, that has meant Adobe Acrobat Professional, which contains features, such as Bates Stamping and metadata removal, that are often used by attorneys.

Recently, however, Nitro PDF Pro has been gaining ground as an acceptable alternative to Acrobat Pro. One key reason for this is that Nitro includes many of the features found in Acrobat Pro, but at a fraction of the cost. Nitro PDF Pro costs $99. Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional costs $449.

The question is whether you can do everything that you need to do with Nitro and save yourself some money. The short answer to that is maybe. There are many things that I like about this program and only a couple that keep me from recommending it as you primary PDF handler.

First, Nitro does some things better than Adobe. For example, I hate the menus in Acrobat. They are clunky and, although technically customizable, the limits to the customization are so great as to render them uncustomizable in practice. Nitro, however, has adopted the ribbon introduced in Microsoft Office 2007.

The ribbon presents a much cleaner interface that makes it easy to find the tools included with the program. Additionally, just as with Office 2007, you can easily minimize the ribbon to maximize screen space. Plus, you can easily add or remove icons on the top toolbar.

The second thing that Nitro handles much better than Acrobat is the ability to insert text. In Acrobat 8, Adobe introduced the Typewriter function that allows you to add text to your document as though you were using a typewriter. The feature is nice, but the ability to format the text is very limited and often frustrating to work with.

With Nitro, however, you have full control over the appearance of your text. You can choose any font you have installed on your system, choose the color, and choose the font size, all as though you were working in a word processer.

In addition to the features that Nitro handles better than Acrobat, Nitro can also perform many of the same functions that you can in Acrobat. For example, Nitro includes commenting and markup features such as sticky notes, a highlighter, the snapshot tool, boxes, stamps, and callout boxes. All of these tools allow you to easily annotate the document.

Also, Nitro includes the ability to split your PDF, join PDFs, inset pages, and otherwise manipulate the pages in the document. Similarly, you can easily add bookmarks, hyperlinks, and watermarks to your document.

A feature I was pleasantly surprised to find was the ability to Bates Stamp your documents. You can easily set the starting number, add a prefix or suffix, and choose the location of the stamp. Plus, just as with the inset text feature, you have full control over the font, size, and color of the stamp.

The only drawback that I found with this feature is that I found no way to save my different Bates numbering schemes. With Acrobat, I can identify my numbering scheme and the program remembers the last number that I used. When I need to stamp additional documents on that same case, it starts numbering from where I last left off. I wish that Nitro incorporated this feature.

The largest objection I have with working with Nitro as my only PDF program is that it does not include an OCR engine to add a layer of text to your PDF. If you currently use a third party program to add a text layer to your PDF, then this no problem. I, however, typically use Acrobat’s OCR engine to add a text layer to my PDFs. Thus, not having this feature in Nitro PDF Pro is a big negative for me.

The other quibble that I have with Nitro is how it handles multiple documents. With many programs (including Word and Acrobat), when you open multiple documents, you get multiple windows that you can move around. I find this tremendously useful when I am working and it allows me to fully utilize my multiple monitor setup. Nitro, however, uses tabs, similar to how web browsers use tabs.

I admit that the tabs are implemented really well and include some nice features, such as the ability to group certain tabs together. What I would really like to see is the ability to open multiple instances of Nitro, while also retaining the ability to use the tabs within each instance of Nitro that is open.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well designed this program is. If it included an OCR engine, I would not hesitate to recommend it as a possible substitute for Adobe Acrobat. As it stands, I believe that Nitro PDF Professional is far superior to Acrobat in its handling of its menus as well as with its typewriter function. Further, Nitro performs many of the same functions that you find in Acrobat, and does most of these just as well. If you are looking for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat, try the free 14 day trial and see if Nitro PDF meets your needs.

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Using Excel to Keep Track of Your Time

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A friend of mine swears that Microsoft Excel does everything that an attorney needs to properly bill his clients. I am a big fan of Excel, however, I am not sure that it is the perfect solution. Further, I am sure that it is not the right solution for many attorneys.

However, I am a big believer in people making better use of the technology they already own before they spend money buying new technology. I have found very few attorneys who even open Excel, let alone use any of its powerful capabilities.

Esquire|Mac has a great post explaining how he uses Excel to keep track of his time. I urge you to check out his post for two reasons. First, he has a template available in the post that allows you to be up and running using Excel to keep track of your time. Simply download the template and store it with your other Excel templates.

Second, in his post explains the process he went through to write the formula that he uses in the template that he created. Reading through the post gives you an idea of just some of the things that you can do with Excel. Admittedly, if you have not worked with Excel before, most of what he has to say will sound like gibberish. However, it is a good place to start. If you follow along with what he describes, you can start to get an idea of how to put together a formula in Excel.

Also, please note that, although the template was prepared on a Mac, it still works fine on your Windows machine.

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Improving Acrobat’s Document Compare Function

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Adobe Acrobat has a really powerful document compare feature. This is a great feature in that there are times that you just can’t get  a copy of the original word processing document to run a comparison with it. One of the drawbacks of the feature, however, is that sometimes the amount of information that you get can be overwhelming.

In this case, getting too much information can be almost as bad as not getting enough information. Fortunately, Adobe has come up with a way to modify the types of information that you see when you compare documents.

The information can be found here at The PDF Developer Junkie Blog. The author has written a JavaScript that will add a menu item that allows you additional control over what you see in the document compare screens.

The great thing is that you really don’t have to understand what he is talking about in order to use the script. Simply follow his step by step instructions to download the script and add another feature to your Acrobat menu.

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Acrobat.com Presentations

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Recently I had the opportunity to preview a newly released product from Acrobat.com. This product, which is called Presentations, is probably best described as an online version of PowerPoint that is powered by flash. The product is still in development. Thus, it is not yet fully mature. However, I like what I see so far.

First, it works simply. If you know how to use PowerPoint, you will easily be able to handle this. What makes this product so great, however, is that it is part of Adobe’s online collaboration suite, which includes applications such as Buzzword (word processor), ConnectNow (online meetings). This means that Presentations is perfectly designed to allows people in different locations to work together to create a presentation, without having to email PowerPoint files back and forth.

I am quite excited about the possibilities that are being offered here. The ability to collaborate easily, and seamlessly with others in creating presentations is something that could be used by many people.

On the flip side, a couple of words of caution are in order. First the application is still under development, thus it does not have all of its features yet. Significantly, although you can display your presentation from Acrobat.com, the only way to display it when you are not connected to the internet, is to print it to PDF. Adobe has said that, in the future, they plan to have the ability to export to PowerPoint. That functionality is not here yet, however.

Additionally, you can work on the Presentation only when connected to Acrobat.com. Again, Adobe has said that they plan to add an offline feature (maybe something like Google Gears), however, that is not yet here.

In sum, I don’t think that the current iteration of Presentations is a game changer. However, if Adobe includes the full functionality that they are describing, it would not surprise me that, in the near future, many of us will be creating our presenetations on Adobe Presentations and meeting to talk about it on AdobeConnect.

At PDF for Lawyers, Ernie the Attorney also has some kind words about Presentations. Check out his thoughts here.

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Adding Exhibit Stamps in Acrobat

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Rick Borstein comes through with another great way to use PDFs in your legal practice: Adding dynamic exhibit stamps.

Rick explains:

Since PDF is the defacto (or often mandated) eFiling standard, it didn’t come as a surprise that I’ve received a few emails on this exhibit stamping PDFs over the last couple of years.

I’ve written previously about creating custom stamps, but an Exhibit Stamp has both a static graphic element and a changing numeric or alphabetic element. I have proposed a workaround using watermarks and the typewriter tool to some firms, but that still was a lot of work.

Only recently have I come across an elegant solution that can accomplish both steps with a click! When you stamp the document, Acrobat will ask you for the exhibit number, then stamp it on the document.

This is a great solution and anyone who uses PDFs in their practice should check it out.

Go here to get directions on how to install this stamp.

Also, once you have applied your stamps, don’t forget to flatten your page. Rick has instructions in his post on how to do that. You can find an alternative method of flattening here.

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Don’t Let Your Software Control You

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Every so often I read something and I say to myself, I wish I had written that. I had that experience recently when I read a post on PDF for Lawyers.

In the post, Ernie explains:

Remember this joke?  Guy goes into see the doctor, and the doc asks “what seems to be the problem?” The guy says “Doc, it’s my arm.  It hurts when I do this.” And then the doctor says “well, then don’t DO that!”

I mention this joke because it’s basically what happens when people fail to make any attempt to set the preferences for their applications.  Technology trainers are constantly hearing lawyers complain that Word wants to auto-correct certain words.  In the attorneys’ view the problem is irresolvable; it’s a bug in the program that simply can’t be fixed.
He then notes:
Computers seem to make people dumb. Imagine picking anyone out of a crowd and telling them that they’d get to live in a mansion with a butler for a week.  The first time the butler does something that is annoying or not to their liking, do you think they’d be at a loss as to how to fix the problem?  No, they’d pipe right up and command the butler to do what they want. Even if they never had a butler before.
But these same people when they get a new program seem to think that the designers of the program have configured it just for them.  And so therefore they should expect it to work perfectly in the way that’s most natural for them. If it doesn’t then they curse the program.

I run into this problem all of the time. For example, I will ask someone why they didn’t use the automatic paragraph numbering feature in Word. They’re response is typically something along the lines of “I don’t like how Word does it.”

Not liking Word’s default formating for automatically numbering paragraphs is a reasonable position to take. Rejecting automatic numbering as a result is not. If you don’t like how a program does something, change it. Don’t suffer in silence. Every program out there has some options for you to change the default settings. Most of the time you can change the program to work as you desire.

Admittedly, there are some things that you can’t change about how a program works. If that is the case, I urge you to not simply throw up your hands in frustration and curse the programmers. If there is a feature you want, or a setting you want the ability to change, you should contact the publisher of the program. I can’t guarantee that the publisher will listen to you. However, I bet that you will find that most companies are more receptive to user suggestions than you would expect. Certainly you are more likely to get your issues addressed with a smaller company rather than a large company.

However, if you have an issue with a piece of software, do not suffer in silence. If no on ever complains, chances are, the problem will never be fixed.

If you are interested in learning how to customize the features in Acrobat, check out the rest of Ernie’s post. If you want to learn how to control what your information in Word looks like, check out my series of posts on formatting in Microsoft Word. If you want to control whether a PDF opens in your web browser of Acrobat, see my post here.

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Reviews of UltraMon and Nitro PDF Pro

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Today I had two reviews published by the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section in their Law Practice Today webzine.

The first is a review of UltraMon, a product I have used for years. If you use multiple monitors, you definitely need to check this utility out.

The second is a review of Nitro PDF PRo. I have use this program just during the last few months. During that time, however, I have been very impressed with the options it has to handle PDFs.

Go here for further information on UltraMon and here for further information on NitroPDF Pro.