Customizing Acrobat X Common Tools

Whenever I get a chance to show Acrobat X in person, the first thing I do is show how to customize the interface.

If you’ve used Acrobat X for some time, you probably have already discovered how to use QuickTools to add your favorite functions to the toolbar. I wrote about this previously in my article Quick Access to Frequently Used Stamps.

Another area of Acrobat that may be customized are the Common Tools. The Common Tools include all of the page navigation and other tools:

In this article, I’ll show you how to customize Acrobat’s Common Tools and answer these questions:

Enjoy!

Just a Right Click Away . . .

The Common Toolbar is customized using a menu.

The easiest way to access the menu is to hover over the Common Toolbar, and right-click (Command-Click on the Mac):

Each of the top menus (Rotate View, Page Navigation, Page Display, Select & Zoom, File, Edit) control which icons will appear on the toolbar..

By default, the Page Navigation toolbar includes a Previous Page and Next Page tool:
Hidden in this section are several other very useful tools which I always enable:

These extra tools such as the First Page, Last Page and Previous and Next View buttons allow you to more quickly move between pages and views.

To enable all of these tools, follow the illustration below:

Page Display Tools

I rarely change the defaults here, but I will describe Acrobat’s default behavior which, I think, is interesting.

In most cases, Acrobat behaves perfectly. For example, when you are looking at a letter-size page full width, scrolling is continuous as in your word processing program. However, when you are looking at an entire page, Acrobat snaps scrolling from page to page.

Of course, you have options . . . if you want scroll documents in Fit Page mode, you certainly can. Want to try some of these different options?

  1. Right-click on the Common Toolbar
  2. Choose Page Display
  3. Choose Show all Page Display Tools

You can always choose the Reset option for the Page Display toolbar if you don’t like the results.

Select and Zoom Tools

Marquee Zoom Tool

Zoom in, Zoom out . . . these are operations you may do frequently in Acrobat, so it makes sense to put tools up front where you can find them.

I like to enable the Marquee Zoom tool, also known as the Magnifying Glass tool.

The Marquee Zoom tool allows you to draw a rectangle surrounding the area in which you are interested, then have the screen zoom in to just the area selected.

You can also click once on the Marquee Zoom tool on the page and Acrobat will zoom in via 25% increments. Hold down CTRL and click to zoom out in 25% increments.

To add in the Marquee Zoom tool:

  1. Right-click on the Common Toolbar
  2. Choose Select and Zoom
  3. Enable the Marquee Zoom tool

File Menu Tools

By default, all of the File Menu tools are on in Acrobat and you probably won’t want to change them. These tools are:

One note about Share . . . by default, Acrobat is configured to use the Share Pane so you can quickly send documents via Adobe’s SendNow Service which is a convenient way to send large files. As good as SendNow is, I don’t use it nearly as much as good old email.

To tell Acrobat not to use the Share Pane, choose Edit>Preferences and go to the Online section. Once there, turn off “Use Share Pane when sending Email Attachment”.

Edit Menu Tools

The Common Toolbar Edit tools in Acrobat offer quick access to three tools which are not on by default, but that you may find very helpful.

Of these three, I only turn on the Snapshot tool by default since it doesn’t have a keyboard equivalent.

Still, I’ve heard from many legal pros that simply – must – have – Find – on – the – toolbar.

I hear you! Here’s how to add the Find tool to the Acrobat toolbar:

  1. Right-click on the Common Toolbar
  2. Choose Edit
  3. Enable the Find tool

In the screen shot below, I’ve marked Take Snapshot (A) and Find (B):

Oops! How do I set it all back to the defaults?

Acrobat allows you to quickly and easily reset:

Right-click on the Common toolbar, then choose any of the toolbar sections.

For example, to reset all of your Common tools, Select (A).

To resent only the Select and Zoom tools, Select (B).