This guide will help you assemble a navigable PDF for various purposes, such as professional portfolios, promotion, and tenure. You may not need or use every tutorial here, but they should generally show you what's possible and can help you with specific parts of the project.
Design
Organization
Table of Contents. You can create a dedicated Table of Contents page or pages, that include just page numbers or are actively linked to your content. Unlike Bookmarks (see below), the Table of Contents is a page within your portfolio, wherein the items in the Table list are hyperlinked.
Bookmarks. PDFs can contain a table of contents or organization that exists separate of any page within the document. In Acrobat or Acrobat reader, this typically appears on the lefthand side when the Bookmarks tool is made visible. File names will appear as top-level headings. With .docx files, headings will appear in their proper order and levels, but pages are not recognized. With .pptx files, slides are listed. The links to file names, headings, and slides in the Bookmarks list are rearrangeable, but this does not change their order, or any other content, within the files.
Thumbnails. PDFs can contain a set of small "thumbnail" images of each page that together form a quick-navigation tool. In Acrobat or Acrobat reader, this typically appears on the lefthand side when the Page Thumbnails tool is made visible. This tool is probably less valuable for the reader, since the author can better recognize pages represented by the thumbnails, and only pages, rather than headings, are navigation choices here.For this project you will need Adobe Acrobat, that's part of the Creative Cloud suite available to Canisius College faculty and staff. Acrobat is not a creator toolset, but rather software that allows you to compile, organize, and publish a PDF file that is itself a collection of content created in other file types. Even Adobe does not suggest that you create content in Adobe Acrobat.
So you'll also need a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, or Google Docs. You may also be including files developed in a wide range of apps, such as AutoCAD, Excel, Google Drawings, or Canva. And you may be including files that are in PDF format, within your bigger PDF. These may be files that were always digital, having been saved as PDFs in creation software. Or, they can be scans of paper documents, that are essentially images saved in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat can combine all of these into a single, navigable PDF document readable by anyone with a PDF reader application.
PDF Files: the Basics
A PDF ("Portable Document Format") file offers a consistent format across PC or mobile devices that have a PDF reader. There are many free PDF readers but Adobe's own Acrobat Reader is probably the most popular. A PDF file is not designed to be easily or extensively edited; it's a published product, rather than a draft. Create your content in tools like Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, or Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Drawings. Then, within Adobe Acrobat, you can add these together into a PDF file, and do final arrangement and organization, together with some minor edits, if needed. Major editing, reformatting, or adding additional content is best done in the original document files, such as .docx, or Google Docs, rather than in Acrobat. Since it isn't built for extensive content creation, Acrobat's tools can be awkward and inefficient for major changes to the content within a PDF.
Some PDF files are text, images, and graphics that are so indexed within the file that they can be extensively edited in Adobe Acrobat. Others are crude scans that consist of a single image - like a photocopy or photograph - of something that happens to be saved within a PDF file. With the latter, Adobe's tools may be able to do little or no editing, besides perhaps crude text overlay or annotations. What Acrobat can do with a scanned document depends on the quality and condition of the paper original, and the circumstances of it's scanning.
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Adobe Acrobat's "PDF Portfolio" tool allows you to create the latter, where your .docx, .jpg,, .pptx, and other file types keep those identities and remain independently editable. While practical for some uses, this creates a complicated file for your readers, wherein they must take special steps to view the included contents. So for many projects, Adobe's PDF Portfolio is not the best choice.
Design
Organization
Table of Contents. You can create a dedicated Table of Contents page or pages, that include just page numbers or are actively linked to your content. Unlike Bookmarks (see below), the Table of Contents is a page within your portfolio, wherein the items in the Table list are hyperlinked.
Bookmarks. PDFs can contain a table of contents or organization that exists separate of any page within the document. In Acrobat or Acrobat reader, this typically appears on the lefthand side when the Bookmarks tool is made visible. File names will appear as top-level headings. With .docx files, headings will appear in their proper order and levels, but pages are not recognized. With .pptx files, slides are listed. The links to file names, headings, and slides in the Bookmarks list are rearrangeable, but this does not change their order, or any other content, within the files.
Thumbnails. PDFs can contain a set of small "thumbnail" images of each page that together form a quick-navigation tool. In Acrobat or Acrobat reader, this typically appears on the lefthand side when the Page Thumbnails tool is made visible. This tool is probably less valuable for the reader, since the author can better recognize pages represented by the thumbnails, and only pages, rather than headings, are navigation choices here.
Creating PDF Files or Pages using Microsoft Word
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