What Are You Interested In? Last Year’s Top Ten Pages

I am always interested in what article on my blog are the ones that remain popular over time. Here is last year’s top ten list:

# Page Name / Link Page Views (Percent)
1 Duplicate a Page in Adobe Acrobat 14.37%
2 “No Pages Selected To Print” Error 10.14%
3 Where are my Adobe Acrobat 9 Updates??? 8.70%
4 Home Page 7.71%
5 Modify Dynamic PDF Stamps in Acrobat 7.14%
6 Validating Field Contents 6.31%
7 Batch-Import Excel Data into PDF Forms 3.97%
8 Missing Characters After Merging or Inserting PDF Files? Here is a Potential Workaround 2.75%
9 Create Custom Commands in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2.70%
10 Acrobat DC is Here – You may want to wait with upgrading until you read this… 2.42%

Let’s take a look at the different pages and my take on the issues:

#1: Duplicate a Page in Adobe Acrobat

This is a surprise winner: I would not have thought that duplicating a page in Acrobat is such an important feature. For those who’ve read the page – or know how to do this already – it’s not very intuitive, so that may explain why people are searching for (and finding) this page.

#2: “No Pages Selected To Print” Error

No surprise here, based on my work on the (now defunct) AcrobatUsers.com and the Adobe Forums, I know that this problem has been a around for a few years without a fix or a good explanation about why it’s happening in form of a KB article from Adobe.

#3: Where are my Adobe Acrobat 9 Updates???

Adobe has fixed part of the problem by now providing a PDF file that explains what updates need to be applied in what order, but users are still struggling with finding the updates. The FTP server is just not as intuitive as clicking on a web link.

#4: Home Page

Almost 8% of visitors come in through the home page (or end up on the home page eventually). This is interesting – and good – for me because that’s where I advertise my services. I have to pay my mortgage and eat so that I can create all this free content. If you have any needs in the big world of PDF, please consider my consulting business as a shortcut to a working solution. And to those of you who have hired me: Thank you!

#5: Modify Dynamic PDF Stamps in Acrobat

This is an old one, but still valid and useful. Oftentimes it’s easier to just modify one of Acrobat’s own dynamic stamps to create something new, compared to starting from scratch. Stamps are a big part of my business, so there is no surprise that this has been a top 10 contender for a number of years.

#6: Validating Field Contents

A good form needs form field validation, and oftentimes that can only be done using JavaScript. One of these days I will write about using regular expressions in these validation scripts, which oftentimes makes things a lot easier.

#7: Batch-Import Excel Data into PDF Forms

This again is a big part of my business, and I know that a lot of people get “their feet wet” with the simple examples that I posted and then turn to me for help for more complex solutions. There is a lot more that can be done with importing (or exporting) form data than what I am able to describe in these simple examples.

#8: Missing Characters After Merging or Inserting PDF Files? Here is a Potential Workaround

I’ve spent a lot of time in debugging different missing character problems in Acrobat, and this is still the most straight forward way of fixing some of these issues. It does not work for all problems, but it’s a good first step in the debugging process.

#9: Create Custom Commands in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

This is almost two years old, but custom commands are still one of my favorite new addition to Adobe Acrobat DC. Oftentimes It’s like Actions, but for one document, without the overhead of an Action, and they can be added to the toolbar. If you want to automate things in Acrobat, this is a good staring point.

#10: Acrobat DC is Here – You may want to wait with upgrading until you read this…

This is no longer an issue, and hopefully it will make room for other top 10 candidates next year.

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2 Responses to What Are You Interested In? Last Year’s Top Ten Pages

  1. esha says:

    I have created pdf document from word document which we use as template and edit this document as per requirements and then fill results in it.
    The concern here is how to secure this document in a way that it should not allow client to delete anything he/she entered.
    means, whatever they are entering should be saved automatically and does not allow to go back to change the values.
    Now if error occurred there should be option to cross it with red line across the value and then reenter it.

  2. Karl Heinz Kremer says:

    esha, you will need to set the field to read-only after the user has entered information. You can do that e.g. in a custom validation script. This would however not take care of the strikethrough requirement. This you can only solve by going to a rich text field.

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