Initiating a shared review in Adobe Acrobat 9 using Microsoft SharePoint

Initiating a shared review in Adobe Acrobat 9 using Microsoft SharePoint

Ali Hanyaloglu – March 27, 2009

Hello! Allow me to introduce you to one of the exciting new capabilities of Acrobat X -

a very nice integration with Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2010 that makes it much easier to work with PDF files stored in document libraries.

In the past, if I wanted to work with PDF files that were being stored and managed in a SharePoint document library,

I would have had to manually check-out, download, upload and check-in those files.

Now with Acrobat X, I can open the PDF file directly by, say, clicking on its name here in my browser.

Not only will the file open in Acrobat X, but Acrobat X will also ask me if I wish to check and open that file out too.

That way, if others try to access the PDF file from their browser, they will see that it's been checked out to me.

Back in Acrobat here, I see this file is almost ready for publication, but I have noticed a small typo that will need to be fixed,

so I will use the Edit Document Text tool from the Content panel of the Tools pane.

Let's go ahead and click on that, and make the change to the phone number here so the right person gets called with any questions.

Now that the PDF file is open from the SharePoint document library, I will have access to a SharePoint Server menu command from the File menu.

This will allow me to check the file back in, discard my check out and any changes I have made,

or edit the document properties for this file as specified by the SharePoint document library owner - I can do this right from within Acrobat X.

I need to go up here and change the status to be final,

let's go ahead and set this to be not confidential any more,

and while we're here, why don't we go ahead and change the date....

We'll click OK - Now that's done, I think we are ready to go and make this available to others.

I can return to the File menu and choose the SharePoint Server command to check this back in.

Or, just by closing my file, Acrobat X will of course prompt me to save the changes I've made to it,

but then it will ask me if I would like to go ahead and check this document in too, so others can see my changes.

I want to say yes, and right from inside of Acrobat X I can specify versioning information, such as choosing the version number and add any comments.

We click OK, the file will close and become available for others to work with.

Back in our web browser, in SharePoint, we can take a look at this file and the version history

and we can see how John was the last one to work with this particular file and it's ready to send out for publishing.

And you know what's really exciting about this capability?

It's also available from the free Adobe Reader X too; anyone within the organization can work with PDF files stored in SharePoint with little fuss.

Thanks for watching!