According to Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager specializing in the Acrobat-Legal Market for Adobe, at Acrobat for Legal Professionals, Acrobat 9.0 will be released in July with many new features designed specifically for the legal market. I’ve attended a few seminars Rick has given on using Acrobat in a legal environment and am always impressed with the wealth of knowledge he has for our market.
Rick has actually used the new version, Acrobat 9.0 and one of the most exciting aspects in my opinion is that it is reportedly much faster. The main application loads in a third of the time as previous versions and all aspects of the program are allegedly much ‘snappier’.
Among the new features are (Click the image for a video of the new feature):
Enhanced Redaction
Specific Enhancements including, Redact using Patterns to find Social Security Numbers, Emails, Redact using Word Lists, Redact entire pages, Apply Redactions in batch and Automatically rename files with a suffix of your choosing (_redacted)
Bates Numbering
Easily select entire folders for numbering, Set an output folder so your originals stay untouched, Rename files on output with a prefix or suffix and Rename files to Bate range e.g. 000001-000039.pdf
Enhanced Typewriter Tool
Set Typeface font, Set color of text, Set size of text and Enable the Typewriter tool for Adobe Reader users (Pro only)
File splitting
Split files by, File Size, Number of Pages, Top-level Bookmarks, Rename files with prefix and suffix and Split multiple files
Better Save to Word with flowing text
Save documents with flowing text, Retain most formatting for easier editing and Export multiple PDFs to Word or other formats using Export Multiple feature
Enhanced Form Creation from scanned PDF’s
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
PDF Portfolios (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 and Rename files
Direct editing of header fields
More powerful Document Comparison (Completely Rewritten)
Compare all changes in documents including text, images, moved pages, etc., Summarize changes as annotations to documents, Find differences in pictures and Choose what you want to compare— or ignore— including images, headers and footers, etc.
Pricing and Availability
Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Standard for Microsoft Windows®, and Acrobat 9 Pro for Mac OS X, are expected to be available by July 2008 in English, French, German, and Japanese language versions. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is expected to be available for US$699, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat2 can upgrade to Acrobat 9 Pro Extended for US$229. Acrobat 9 Pro is expected to be available for US$449, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat3 can upgrade to Acrobat 9 Pro for US$159. Acrobat 9 Standard is expected to be available for US$299, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat4 can upgrade to Acrobat 9 Standard for US$99.
If you haven’t checked out Rick’s blog, you really need to, it’s full of great tips on Acrobat.