Selecting tables and formatted text

The second text tool on the Basic toolbar is called the Select Table tool, and as its name implies, you use this tool when you want to copy text set in a table or to copy text along with its formatting (including font, font size, text color, alignment, line spacing, and indents when saving in an RTF — Rich Text Format — file format). To use the Select Table tool, you use its cross-hair mouse pointer to draw a bounding box around a table or lines of text that you want to select. As soon as you release the mouse button, Acrobat encloses the selected text or table in a heavy blue outline. The Select Table tool can make table selections based on a PDF document’s underlying document structure tags. To find out if you’re working with a tagged PDF document, right-click the page with the Select Table tool to see if the Select Table Uses Document Tags command is activated (the PDF file is tagged) or grayed-out (the PDF file in untagged) on the context menu. Acrobat automatically selects this command when you open a tagged PDF document. If you’re working with a tagged PDF document, you can simply click with the Select Table tool to select a table or lines of text formatted as a table.
When Acrobat identifies a text selection as a table, it maintains the structure of the table by preserving the layout of the data in rows and columns of cells. If you then save the table data in the RTF file format for use in a word-processed document, the table maintains this layout in the new document. If you save the table data in the CSV (Comma Separated Values) text file format, which is the default format selected by Acrobat, the program maintains the table structure by separating the data items with commas and hard returns. This creates what is often called a comma delimited text file that most database and spreadsheet programs can convert easily into their own native file formats.

Selecting columns of text

The Select Text tool enables you to select complete columns of text without having to worry about selecting text in any adjacent columns on the page that you don’t want to include. Use this tool when you need to copy all or part of columns on a single page of a PDF document that uses newspaper columns.
To select a column of text with the Select Text tool, you simply drag the Ibeam pointer from the top-left corner of a column of text in a diagonal direction toward the bottom-right corner of the column of text and release the mouse button.
In this figure, I have used the Select Text tool to select all the text in the righthand column. The selected text is now available for copying to the Clipboard or dragging to a document in another program window. If you’re working with a lot of text in a PDF document, you can configure the Hand tool in Acrobat 6 to automatically function as the Select Text tool when you hover it over text in a PDF document. Choose Edit➪Preferences or press Ctrl+K (Ô+K on Mac) to open the Preferences dialog box. Click General in the list box on the left to display the General Preferences options, and then select the Enable Text Selection for the Hand tool check box. You can enter values (measured in picas) in the Text Selection Margin Size and Column Selection Margin Size text boxes to specify how much white space around text or columns to allow before the Hand tool transforms into the Text Selection tool and vice versa.

Using drag-and-drop to copy text

Instead of copying and pasting to and from the Clipboard, you can just drag the selected text from the PDF file open in an Acrobat window to a new document open in another program window. Figure how this method works.
PDF document open in the Acrobat program window on the right, I dragged the Select Text tool through the lines with the title and the first paragraph of text to select it. Then I dragged this text selection to the new document window open in Microsoft Word on the left by positioning the arrowhead mouse pointer (with the outline of the text selection) at the very beginning of the blank document.

Extracting Blocks of Text from PDF

Before you can copy sections of text in a PDF document to the Clipboard or another open document, you need to select the text in the PDF document. To select text in a PDF document, you use two of the three different tools found on the Selection toolbar, which is attached to the Basic toolbar:

• Select Text tool (V): Use this tool to select lines or columns of text by dragging through them.
• Select Table tool (Shift+V): Use this tool to select a table or block of text with its formatting by drawing a bounding box around the table or text block.

You can also use the TouchUp Text tool (press T to select this tool) to select a block of text defined by its underlying document structure tags, such as whole headings or whole paragraphs. True to its name, this tool should be used only when you need to extract small amounts of text from a PDF document. Like the text selection tools on the Basic toolbar, text selected with the TouchUp Text tool can be copied, deleted, edited, and placed in other program documents . When you use the Select Text tool to select lines or columns of text in a PDF document, you can then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by choosing Edit➪Copy or by pressing Ctrl+C (Ô+C on the Mac). After you’ve copied the text to the Clipboard, you can switch to a document open in another program and then paste the copied text into the file by using that program’s Edit➪Paste command or by pressing Ctrl+V (Ô+V on the Mac).

Encrypting PDF Files

The last and most secure type of security that you can add to your PDF documents employs the Certificate Security system that you use to digitally sign documents, along with the list of Trusted Certificates in your user Digital ID file. When you encrypt a PDF document with Certificate Security, no one has access to the document other than those you specifically designate as recipients, and you can designate as recipients only those persons who are already on your Trusted Certificates list.
The steps for encrypting a PDF document with Certificate Security are as follows:

1. Choose Document➪Security➪Encrypt for Certain Identities Using Certificates. The Restrict Opening and Editing to Certain Identities dialog box opens.
2. In the Identity Directories list box, click the name of the person you want to add to the Recipients list box below, and then click the Add to Recipient List button.
3. Click the name of the newly added recipient to highlight it in the Recipients list box.
4. Click the Set Recipient Permissions button. By default, Acrobat grants the recipient full access to the PDF document whose user permissions include general editing, commenting and form field authoring privileges, the ability to print the document at any print resolution, and full copying and extraction privileges.
5. To restrict the recipient’s user permissions in some way, click the Restrict Printing and Editing of the Document and Its Security Settings button.
6. Limit the permissions by deselecting the Enable Text Access for Screen Reader Devices for the Visually Impaired check box and/or the Enable Copying of Text, Images and Other Content check box and/or by selecting new options in the Changes Allowed and Printing Allowed drop-down lists before you click OK.
7. Repeat Steps 3 through 6 (as they apply) to add your other recipients from the Identity Directories list box and set their user permissions in the Recipients list box.
8. After you’ve added all the recipients and set their user permissions, click the OK button. If the Certificate Security - Alert box appears, telling you that settings will not be applied until you save your PDF document, click OK. You can also opt to not show this dialog box in the future by selecting the Do Not Show This Message Again check box before you click OK.
9. Choose File➪Save to save the Certificate Security encryption settings for the current document. Alternatively, choose File➪Save As and edit the filename and/or folder location of the encrypted document before clicking the Save button. After you save your PDF file encrypted with Certificate Security, you can distribute copies to all the people you added to the Recipients list. When someone on the list tries to open the encrypted file, Acrobat displays the Select My Digital ID File dialog box, where the user selects his or her user Digital ID and enters his or her user password. When the user clicks the OK button to close the Select My Digital ID file dialog box, Acrobat checks the user’s public key against the certificate information (specifically the MD5 and SHA-1 fingerprints) in the encrypted file.

When Acrobat finds they match, it then opens the PDF document. The user then has access to the opened document according to user permissions that you set. To check these permissions, the user can right-click (Control+click on the Mac) the Document Encrypted key that now appears on the Document pane Status bar (a locked padlock on the left of the Status bar), select Document Security on the context menu, and then click the Security Settings button in the Document Properties dialog box.
If someone not on the Recipients list attempts to open a PDF document that’s encrypted with Certificate Security, upon logging in, he or she will receive the Certificate Security - Alert dialog box with the message You do not have access rights to this encrypted document. When the user clicks OK to clear this dialog box, the document will fail to open.

Comparing signed PDF documents

Each time a person digitally signs a PDF document that already has one signature, Acrobat saves the changes and signature of each subsequent signatory in a special appended version of the file. You can then compare the various versions to note what changes, if any, each signatory made.
Acrobat notes when a PDF document that you’ve sent out for subsequent signatures comes back to you with changes by adding a Document Was Modified item to the Signatures palette. You can then display the details of the modifications by clicking the Expand button (with the plus sign on Windows and the triangle pointing to the right on the Mac). Note that the detailed change items shown in the expanded list are purely informational and do not perform as bookmarks.
To have Acrobat do a side-by-side comparison of the versions to let you visually compare the changes, select View Signed Version on the Signatures palette Options pop-up menu. Acrobat then displays the original version of the PDF file and the most current version in a Document pane. To compare the files side by side, choose Window➪Tile➪Vertically. You can then scroll through the pages, visually noting the differences. When you’re finished checking the changes, close the original version on the left by clicking its document window’s Close button and maximize the latest version on the right by clicking its document window’s Maximize button. If you would prefer, you can have Acrobat do a page-by-page comparison and locate all the changes between the latest signed version and the original. To do this, select Compare Signed Version to Current Document on the Signatures palette Options pop-up menu. Acrobat then performs a page-by-page comparison and creates a second PDF document containing only the pages that have changed. These changed pages are displayed side by side. When you have finished comparing these pages, you can close this newly created document by pressing Ctrl+W (Ô+W). You can then save it in its own PDF file by clicking the Yes button in the alert dialog box that asks you if you want to save the changes before closing. If you have no further need for this comparison PDF file, you can click the No button to abandon the comparison document and just return to the most up-to-date signed version of the PDF document.

Adding certificates to your Trusted Certificates list

The way that you add the certificates that you receive to your Trusted Certificates list depends upon how you receive them. If you receive an e-mail message with a certificate attached, you can launch Acrobat, validate the certificate, and add the certificate to your Trusted Certificates list all by simply opening the certificate file attached to the message in your e-mail program (in most programs, you open an attachment by double-clicking the file attachment icon).
When Acrobat launches, it displays the Data Exchange File - Import Contact dialog box. To add the certificate to your list, click the Set Contact Trust button to open the Import Contact Settings dialog box. The Trust Signatures Created with this Certificate check box is selected by default. Click the Import button to import the certificate data and create a Digital ID certificate that will appear in your Trusted Identities list. If you have access to someone’s Self-Sign Security certificate file on your computer system, you can add it to your Trusted Certificates list by clicking the Import from File button in the Trusted Certificates portion of your User Settings dialog box. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Choose Advanced➪Manage Digital IDs➪Trusted Identities to open the Manage Trusted Identities dialog box.
2. Click the Add Contacts button to open the Select Contacts to Add dialog box, and then click the Browse for Certificates button.
3. Locate the certificate exchange file you want to import in the LocateCertificate File dialog box, and then click the Open button. The selected certificate data file appears in the upper list box of the Select Contacts to Add dialog box.
4. Click the Add to Contacts List button to display the certificate exchange file in the Contacts to Add list box below; then click OK.
5. Click OK to close the alert dialog box and return to your Manage Trusted Identities dialog box, where you see the name of the person you just added to your Trusted Identities list.
6. Click the Close button to close the Manage Trusted Identities dialog box.