(From June 2005 Working RE)
 

How to Reach Your Potential (Using Acrobat)

By Pat Butler 

Adobe Acrobat is a very powerful program, yet most appraisers and inspectors use only a fraction of its capabilities. This story introduces you to several features that I find useful in my appraisal business. Some are advanced and some require additional software. You’ll find the basic steps to complete the procedures included but you may still have to take a peak at the manual for more detailed instructions.

Copy & Paste Pages between Reports

This is the one “must know” feature of Acrobat. Acrobat allows you to insert pages from one PDF file into another. There are many reasons why you would need to do this. Say you’ve just created a PDF file of an appraisal (from your appraisal software) and have another Word or Excel document that needs to be part of the report. In the old days you would print all the documents on paper and staple the packet together. Acrobat does let you create PDF files for each document from their respective programs easily (see below). But you still have separate PDF documents that need to be combined. Acrobat allows you to combine PDF files in a number of ways: here is the simplest.

First, open each PDF document that you want to combine in Acrobat. It allows you to have multiple PDF files open just like Windows. Go to: Window, Tile, Horizontally. Both documents are now displayed on your screen, one above the other.

Click the “Show/Hide Navigation Pane” button on your toolbar which will open up an additional window to the left of your PDF document. You’ll need to click on the title bar of the other PDF document and click its “Show/Hide Navigation” button also. In the Navigation pane for each document, click on the “Thumbnails” tab. That will display tiny thumbnail pictures of your documents. If you click on one of those pages you’ll see that you can drag the thumbnail from the navigation pane of one document to the other. This moves that page from one document to another. To move multiple pages at once, just click on the first page, hold down the shift key and click on the next page. You can then move multiple pages at once.

Converting a PDF File into a Different Format

Today, many types of documents are available in PDF file format. You may have a PDF document that you’d like to insert into your appraisal/inspection report. For instance, FEMA provides flood maps online in PDF format. You can download a PDF flood panel called a “firmette” from their site but how do you get it into your report? Or, suppose you download market statistics from the Internet in PDF format – how do you integrate them into your report?

The crux of the problem is that most appraisal software programs only allow the user to insert a graphic that is in a typical format, such as tiff or jpg. Did you know that you can easily convert a PDF file into a graphic format such as tiff or jpg? In Acrobat, choose “File,” “Save As,” and then pick either .jpg or .tif in the file type drop down box.

Creating “Post it Notes”

Adobe has designed Acrobat to be used collaboratively. They envision users sending documents back and forth for editing. Therefore there are features such as “annotations” and “notes” that allow you to “mark up” your appraisals/inspection reports digitally. Check out the Note Tool, which allows you to overlay a digital “sticky note” on your PDF file. The file can be printed without having the “note” print.

Also, try the “Annotations” feature that allows you to annotate a document. This is useful when numerous people are making changes to a PDF file because Acrobat keeps track of the person doing the annotating as well as the time and date it was done. I use this feature extensively when doing litigation work. I’ll email a copy of my appraisal to the attorney along with comments and questions. The attorney can respond in the same way. With this feature, you are using Acrobat like a contact manager.

Editing Text

Did you know that you can edit text in a PDF file? It requires the full Adobe Acrobat package (not just the free Adobe Reader). The tool that accomplishes this task is the “Text Touchup Tool” and its icon is a letter “T”.  (Not to be confused with the Text Select Tool.) Once you are viewing your PDF file in Acrobat, select the Text Touchup Tool and click on any text that you want to edit.

Here are some caveats: First, this tool only works on one line of text at a time. It doesn’t allow each line of text to “wrap” or be connected with any other lines of text. If you delete words in a sentence and the sentence gets shorter, no words will flow up from the line below. This means that you may have to edit two of three lines if you are making significant changes. I use this feature often with the FNMA 2055 form. Because the 2055 has all sorts of lending information on it I often have to change the standard text when doing an appraisal for a homeowner. At a minimum, I change the banner line and the “purpose of the appraisal” on the cert page, which states that the appraisal is for lending purposes.

Different Strokes: Signature & Image Compression

Acrobat Distiller creates PDF files just like PDF Writer does. Distiller provides a lot more advanced options however. One of the more useful features is Distiller’s ability to compress different types of graphics individually. Think about the different types of graphics you have in a typical appraisal report. You may have color photographs, which are recognized as a “color image.” You also might be using black and white images from a document that you scanned in. If those images have shades of gray, rather than just black and white, then you are using “grayscale images.” Finally, if you have any images that are just in black and white, like your signature, you are using “monochrome” images. Distiller allows you to adjust the compression settings for each of these three different graphic file types individually. Why is this useful? Consider this—

1. Distiller’s default settings compress all monochrome images automatically, such as your signature. Most appraisal software provides the appraiser’s signature in a monochrome format, which isn’t as good as grayscale. When Distiller compresses your signature, the resulting image often looks rough and fuzzy – like a low resolution image.  To avoid this and produce a clearer image, you can tell Distiller not to compress monochrome images and your file size will barely increase. That’s assuming that your signature is the only monochrome image in your appraisal. The compression settings are in Distiller’s “Job Options” tab.

2. Fine tuning your compression settings. Typically, you are limited to the three different graphic types when choosing compression settings. The problem is that the compression settings work globally throughout your document. So if you choose a particular compression setting for “color image,” it will compress ALL color images to the same extent. So while your comparable photos might compress nicely, your location map might break up and look awful. In practice, your subject & comparable photos will typically look better at a different compression setting than your location map. One or the other will usually not look good if they all are compressed to the same extent.

Consider saving your location map in grayscale or bitmap. That way you can set the compression settings to only affect your map and not your photos. Also, you can print part of your appraisal using certain settings and then print the remaining pages using other settings. You now have two PDF files that can be merged together easily (see above.) This may sound complicated but is no different than selecting picking a printer when to you want to create a PDF file and clicking on a few of the options. The whole process takes 30 seconds or so and allows you to create PDF files that are both compact and contain sharp graphics.

Drag & Drop: Creating a PDF file

One of the confusing aspects of Acrobat is that it allows you to create PDF documents in a variety of ways. One of the easiest ways to create a PDF document is by dragging and dropping a file, such as a Word doc, onto the Acrobat icon. This will automatically create a PDF file using whatever default settings you have chosen in Distiller. You can also create a PDF file by “printing” a document to Acrobat Distiller, which should be a printer choice.

Using the Rubber Stamp Tool

The rubber stamp tool is basically an electronic rubber stamp. You can set it up so that it can “stamp” a graphic anywhere on a PDF file. I use this frequently with my signature and it’s just as useful if you have to provide an image of your appraiser’s seal, for instance.

Acrobat allows you to choose any sort of graphic image as a stamp image. You can continue to edit a file even after you have stamped an image on it. I’ll stamp my signature wherever I need it and can reposition and resize it so that it is in the right place and at the right size. I use this most frequently when I create a PDF file of a complex appraisal that I forgot to digitally sign in my appraisal software. No more having to do it again.

Downloading HTML files from the Internet

Acrobat 5.0 allows you to open HTML files into Acrobat. Simply speaking, this allows Acrobat to display web pages just like your browser does. The difference is that Acrobat also allows you to save those pages as a PDF file. This is incredibly useful when you find a good reference site on the Internet that you’d like to have as your own! Let’s say you find a government web site that has market statistics that you refer to frequently or perhaps HUD guidelines. You can open that site in Acrobat and save it to your hard drive. That’s especially nice because you can use Acrobat’s search functions to find what you are looking for in that document.