Acrobat 9 was announced today! The new version will ship sometime in the next month or so. Here’s a link to the Acrobat 9 Press Release.

Acrobat 9 Box

Acrobat 9 includes many new features of interest to legal professionals!

You can check out demo movies I’ve made of the major new features . . . read on to learn more.

One thing that blew me away is that Acrobat 9 is F-A-S-T! It launches in one-third the time of previous versions and generally feels a lot snappier in use.

All versions of Acrobat can now play Flash content natively. You can embed Flash movies (SWF and FLV) files and play them right in Acrobat. That means you can embed deposition and audio interviews and know that the recipient can play them with confidence.

Adobe is also be launching a new service called Acrobat.com.

Acrobat.com is a collection of free hosted services that you can use to work with people inside and outside your organization,
across geographies and firewalls.

Acrobat 9 users can work with Acrobat.com as a central location for certain document processes such as Shared Review, Form Data Collection and more.

Acrobat.com also offers two amazing, free features:

See and learn about all the new stuff! Read on . . .

Click the icon to play a movie in a new window.

High-speed connection required.

Document Comparison Enhanced a lot!

Watch Document Comparison movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p73795396/

It’s been completely re-written, so I could call it a new feature!- Compare all changes in documents including text, images, moved pages, etc. - Summarize changes as annotations to documents - Find differences in pictures - Choose what you want to compare— or ignore— including images, headers and footers, etc.

**PDF Portfolios New Feature

Watch PDF Portfolio Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p26609538/

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These are PDF Packages on Steroids!- Look professional using nicely designed layouts which can play Flash movies - Organize files in folders - Built-in preview of Word, Excel, and other Office files - Search non-PDF documents in a package - Sort by date, number or text - Rename files - Direct editing of header fields

Redaction Enhanced

Watch Redaction Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p42013371/

- Redact using Patterns to find Social Security Numbers, Emails, and more. - Redact using Word Lists - Redact entire pages - Apply Redactions in batch - Automatically rename files with a suffix of your choosing (_redacted)

Bates Numbering Enhanced

Watch Bates Numbering Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p28689746/

- Easily select entire folders for numbering - Set an output folder so your originals stay untouched - Rename files on output with a prefix or suffix - Rename files to Bate range e.g. 000001-000039.pdf

File Splitting New Feature

Watch File Splitting movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p36324412/

- Split files by - File Size - Number of Pages - Top-level Bookmarks - Rename files with prefix and suffix - Split multiple files

**Forms **Enhanced a lot! __ Watch Forms Creation Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p31706772/

- Acrobat 9 Standard can now create and Reader-enable forms - Automatically find form fields on scanned documents - Easier form authoring which allows you to “Stamp” form fields on documents - Collect form data on Acrobat.com, SharePoint or a network folder

OCR Enhanced!

Watch OCR Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p28891758/

- New ClearScan OCR makes paper documents more readable - OCR multiple documents - Improved speed

Save to Word Enhanced!

Watch Save to Word movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p82583832/

- Save documents with flowing text - Retain most formatting for easier editing - Export multiple PDFs to Word or other formats using Export Multiple feature

Send and Collaborate Live New Feature

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Watch Send and Collaborate Live movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p94947511/

_May need to resize window

- Turn pages and set views in PDFs live for recipients of your PDF - Chat live during a session - Save the Chat history - Combine this feature with Shared Reviews

Web Capture Enhanced

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Watch Web Capture Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p24281297/

_May need to resize window

- Faster and more accurate capture of web pages - Captures complicated sites including Flash movies and other media - Select just what you need in Internet Explorer for conversion - Easily add more pages from the original site by appending them to the document

Email Archiving Enhanced

Watch Email Archiving Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p98421149/

- Archive email to a PDF Portfolio from Outlook and Lotus Notes - Collect more email metadata for “on a budget” EDD - Sort and filter results using a PDF Portfolio - Search non-PDF attachments such as Word and Excel files

Typewriter Tool Enhanced

Watch Typewriter Tool movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p32441122/

- Set Typeface font - Set color of text - Set size of text - Enable the Typewriter tool for Adobe Reader users (Pro only)

Scan to PDF Enhanced

Watch Scanning Movie
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p15116558/

- Save time using Scan presets for typical document types such as B&W, Grayscale and Color - Control your scanner directly