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Preflight reports (Acrobat Pro)

  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. Introducing the new Acrobat experience
    3. What's new in Acrobat
    4. Keyboard shortcuts
    5. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. PDFs converted to web pages
    12. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    13. PDF articles
    14. Geospatial PDFs
    15. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    16. Change the default font for adding text
    17. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to PPTX
    4. Convert PDF to XLSX or XML
    5. Convert PDF to JPG
    6. Convert PDF to PNG
    7. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    8. File format options for PDF export
    9. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. Create a web form
    5. Request e-signatures in bulk
    6. Collect online payments
    7. Brand your account
    8. About certificate signatures
    9. Certificate-based signatures
    10. Validating digital signatures
    11. Adobe Approved Trust List
    12. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
    7. Cloud-based auto-tagging
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Create a results report

You can capture the results of a preflight inspection in various types of reports. You can capture the results in a text file, an XML file, or a single PDF file. A PDF report can include just an overview or detailed information presented in different ways.

A PDF report includes information about the document and problem objects in layers, which you turn on or off in the Layers navigation pane.

Note:

You can also create an inventory of all objects and resources used in the PDF.

Create a report of preflight results

  1. In the Results panel of the Preflight dialog box, click Create Report, or choose Create Report from the Options menu.
  2. Specify a name and location for the report. The suffix “_report” is automatically added to the report name.
  3. Select the type of report, and click Save.

Report types

PDF Report

Creates a summary of problems accompanied by details that are shown using transparent masks, comments, or layers for each problem object.

Overview

Condenses the preflight results into a short document that includes applied fixups, a results summary, and document information.

Details

Reports additional information about each problem object—for example, where the object is located on the page. Problems Highlighted By Transparent Masks places a colored mask, similar to a Photoshop mask, over areas to make the problem areas stand out. You can change the mask color using Preflight preferences. Problems Highlighted By Comments inserts preflight results as comments. Problems Highlighted By Layers shows the file separated into layers of mismatches or found objects according to the criteria used in the profile itself. Another layer called Other Objects includes objects that have nothing to do with the profile used.

XML Report

Produces a structured report for workflow systems that can interpret and process the preflight results. For details, contact your print service provider.

Text Report

Produces a report in plain text format, with each line indented according to the hierarchy in the Preflight Results dialog box. You can open the report in a text editor.

Hide or show layers in a PDF report

  1. In the navigation pane for the PDF report, click the Layers button  to open the Layers panel.
  2. In the Layers panel, expand the report and click the square to the left of a layer name to hide or show the layer.

About inventory reports

An inventory report shows resources used in a PDF, including color spaces, images, patterns, shadings, metadata, and fonts and glyphs in each font family. Related information is grouped together and arranged on a PDF page so that you can scan and locate items. You can run an inventory report before or after you run a preflight inspection. Unlike a preflight results report, which provides only the information requested by checks in the selected profile, an inventory report does not filter the PDF content. Together, a preflight inspection report and an inventory report can help you identify and fix problems.

The information in an inventory report can be useful when you perform tasks such as these:

  • Exploring files that seem unusual, such as those created by an unknown application, or files with slow screen redraw or copy-and-paste actions that don’t work.

  • Examining processing issues, such as failure to print correctly, or problems encountered during color conversion, imposition, placement on an InDesign page, and so on.

  • Identifying aspects of a PDF that are not ideal, such as the inadvertent embedding of a font because of an unnoticed space character on a master page, or cropped images with extraneous image data, or objects that are not of the expected type (such as type or vector objects converted to images or merged with an image).

  • Providing additional information about an object besides its presence. For example, by locating a spot color in the inventory report, you can determine whether it is used by itself or in combination with other colorants, such as in a duotone image. Or you can determine which glyphs in a font are embedded, what they look like, and which character they are supposed to represent. This information can help you resolve a missing-glyph error.

  • Exploring XMP metadata embedded with the file, such as its author, resolution, color space, copyright, and keywords applied to it. This information is stored in a standardized way using the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) standard.

Create an inventory of PDF content

  1. In the Preflight dialog box, choose Create Inventory from the Options menu.
  2. Select the types of objects and resources you want included in the inventory. In addition to fonts, colors, images, and so on, you can include the following information:

    Form XObjects

    Objects that are referenced within a PDF. For example, if a PDF contains many occurrences of the same object, it exists as a single resource that is referenced many times.

    Include XMP Metadata

    Includes information embedded in the PDF that can be used by an XMP-enabled application or device in the workflow. This information can include meaningful descriptions and titles, searchable keywords, the author’s name, and copyright information. If you select Include Advanced Fields, you can include the fields and structures used for storing the metadata using namespaces and properties. This advanced information appears as a text-based tree view of all the XMP data in the PDF, both for the document as well as for those images in the PDF for which XMP metadata is present.

    Note:

    You can also view the metadata for the PDF document as a whole in the Document Properties dialog box. Choose File > Properties, click the Description tab, and then click Additional Metadata. To see the advanced fields, click Advanced from the list on the left.  

  3. (Optional) Save the report.

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Oct 14–16 Miami Beach and online