Make marked up inserted text to appear with rest of document

Microsoft Word is for creating, or entering, content. Acrobat is a document finishing tool. It's for preparing a document for distribution. These are very different things. When you "Markup" text in a PDF you're putting annotations on a page to show, or comment, the things you're concerned with. You cannot change the text in a PDF Document, at least not in a normal workflow. The changes have to be done in the original content creation program.

The normal workflow is to convert the content creation format, such as Word, into a PDF, which is then added to a comment and review session. All members of the comment and review session can add comments to a PDF and post those comments so that the other members can see them. Depending on how the session is setup the reviewers might see the comments immediately. When a document has been thuroughly reviewed it's removed from session and updates are made in the content creation program. And the process is repeated.

Thom Parker
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Wouldn't it make sense then to mark up text in Word first? For example, if 2 people are emailing each other a contract and each is making a change to it before making it final, why would it be converted to a pdf file at all until the document is approved on both sides first?

Ok, say it's too late and he's already emailed me a pdf file. I've made changes to it, deleted & added text to it. When I email him back the revised pdf file, is there a utility in Acrobat that will allow him to approve of these changes and incorporate them into the file with a single click? Or does he have to copy and paste the revised text all over again in Word and then convert it back to a pdf file?

No, there's no such tool in Acrobat, because, as Thom pointed out, it is not a word processing application. If you want to edit the text, do so in Word. When you're done, make a PDF and distribute it.

Hi Outlier,

You could do the whole workflow in Word if you wanted to. There are many situations where you may not want someone else to have the ability to make permanent changes to the contract ( text substituted), but you do want to see their comments so you can make changes to the original, if needed. Usually, the author of the PDF would also have the original file created in another program such as Word- then the author is the only one who can make permanent changes to it.

Also, if a group is reviewing a document, with PDF they are all seeing the exact same document ( layout, graphics, etc) and that may not be true with other file formats.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com
www.pdfscripting.com

So Dimitri, that makes sense - the author probably has the original file in Word. He sent me the file in pdf and I made text markups to it. When I email him back the revised pdf file, is there a utility in Acrobat (either on my end or his end) that will convert it back to a Word document for him which includes all the text markups I made to it (so that he could approve it & make the new changes permanent)? Or does he have to manually copy and paste all of my text insertions as well as delete all the text I crossed out in his original Word document before converting it into another pdf?The reason I'm asking is because if he has to do all that, I may as well try to convert the pdf to a Word file on my own, make all my text changes in the Word file, and then email him the Word file for him to review. Wouldn't that be a lot easier in terms of him having to make all the changes by himself?

By the way, it's not easy finding a good program to convert pdf to Word - alot of them do not do it properly, with wrong formatting and misplaced text. Any recommendation out there?

The latter. You should do all of this in Word only, not in a PDF.

Hi Outlier,

Actually I use that workflow lots- an editor makes markups in an PDF, I then open the original Word file alongside the PDF ( I have a huge monitor) and make changes manually to the Word file. It is not that bad or too hard a process, unless it is something you do all the time. Then I can see it could get tedious.

Acrobat does not have the same approval process for markups that Word does. In a Word file you can right click on a comment and choose to accept the change and the change is inserted and the comment goes away ( I'm pretty sure that is how it works haven;t done it in quite a while).

As far as you converting the PDF to Word, making changes and then converting back- I would not recommend that workflow. Seems like too many things could go wrong and as you point out, depending on the document not all PDF to Word converters do a great job.

If you want to do the whole workflow in Word I would just start and end with Word for all markups, then convert to PDF once the document is complete.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com
www.pdfscripting.com