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Advanced preflight inspections (Acrobat Pro)

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  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
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    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

Before you begin

We're rolling out a new, more intuitive product experience. If the screen shown here doesn’t match your product interface, select help for your current experience.

In the new experience, the tools appear on the left side of the screen.

Viewing preflight problems inside the PDF structure

For detailed information on PDF structure, view Adobe PDF Technology Center. If you have advanced knowledge of the PDF file format, examine the internal structure of the PDF and its fonts for technical reasons for a preflight mismatch. Preflight includes three options for in-depth inspection of a PDF. Technically skilled users can use these tools to analyze the objects and fonts that caused a mismatch.

In-depth knowledge of font internal structures and font specifications for Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType fonts is important. The font specifications are listed in the bibliography of the guide.

Note:

You can navigate the PDF and fonts in the windows that appear, but you can’t edit the PDF structure or fonts.

Browse the internal PDF structure

View the structure of a PDF, as defined by content streams and cos objects, in a tree array. Content streams represent pages, form XObjects, Type 3 font characters, and the appearance of comments and form fields. Cos objects include color space, images, and XObjects.

Check PDF syntax, view the results of a fixup, or determine the cause of a mismatch. Choose between five view modes that organize content streams in different ways. You cannot edit the PDF in the Internal PDF Structure window.

Note:

Do not confuse the internal structure with the logical structure in tagged PDFs that improves accessibility for low- or non-sighted readers. The internal structure is a superset of all objects in the document, including tags.

  1. Open a PDF document, and select Use print production > Preflight from the All tools menu in the left pane. In the Preflight dialog box, select Options, and then select Browse Internal PDF Structure.

    The Internal PDF structure window opens, showing a tree view of the document information and catalog (the root of the document’s object hierarchy).

  2. Expand each tree item to view the document structure.

  3. Select Logical Structure  on the upper-left to view the structure of each page.

  4. To change how content streams appear in the tree view, select a view mode in the toolbar:

    Classic 

    Displays the content stream as a sequence of page content operators. Expand the subtree for an operator to view its operands. This is the default view.

    Q 

    Groups all operators in the content stream with the same graphic state nesting level within a pair of the q/Q operators. Expand the subtree for a q/Q pair to view the operator and parameters inside.

    BMC 

    Similar to Q, but arranges content streams by marked content (BMC/EMC) nesting levels.

    BT/ET 

    Arranges content streams by text blocks enclosed by BT and ET operators.

    Snippet 

    Displays content streams as a series of snippets. A snippet is a contiguous group of objects with the same graphic state. In this view, each snippet represents a type of drawing operation (for example, paint area) and its graphic state.

Browse the internal font structure

View the internal structure of embedded fonts in a PDF in greater detail than the preflight results with a graphical view showing each glyph's outline and coordinates. You can determine the source of various preflight problems, such as mismatches caused by inconsistent glyph widths.

  1. Open a PDF document, and select Use print production > Preflight from the All tools menu in the left pane. In the Preflight window, select Options, and then select Browse Internal Structure of All Document Fonts.

    Note:

    To view the structure of a single font, expand the Fonts entry in Results > Overview. Select a font, and then select Browse Internal Font Structure from the Options menu.

  2. To view the glyph details, select any of the following buttons:

    Display Grid 

    Shows the origin of the glyph’s coordinate space, indicated by two green-colored orthogonal lines.

    Display Boxes 

    Shows the area used by the selected glyph and the maximum area used by all glyphs using blue lines that coincide on the top and bottom.

    Display Filling 

    Shows the areas of a filled glyph as medium gray.

    Display Points 

    Shows all the points used to define the glyph’s outline. Black points indicate the outline’s contour. Red points indicate bezier curves and are offset from the outline’s contour.

    Display Cursor 

    Shows the position of the currently selected point, indicated by two magenta-colored orthogonal lines. This button is available only if Display Points are selected.

  3. To adjust the size of the glyph display area, drag the handle between the tree view and the glyph display area up or down.

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