The more you use Acrobat to view PDFs, and manipulate them, the more you should know about how to get the view you prefer. And you should know how to change views quickly. Most of all, you should at least know what your options are. And this is true even if you just use the free Adobe Reader.
Today let’s focus on one of the options under the VIEW menu: the PAGE DISPLAY options (see graphic below). If you check out the choices under this menu you’ll notice that you can opt to have a SINGLE PAGE view or a TWO PAGE view. Not many lawyers will want the TWO PAGE view, but you might so check it out to see if it appeals to you.
The options you will want to know about is the choice about scrolling. Let’s say you’re in single page view. Do you want each page to snap up, and automatically make the old page disappear? Or do you want to be able to scroll between pages like you would if you were looking at a web page?
I prefer not to have scrolling enabled, but most lawyers that I’ve shown the option to seem to prefer scrolling. I suspect that’s because they’re afraid they won’t remember how to get back to it if they decide they want it. For me, there’s only one time I want the scrolling view, and that’s if I’m copying text that flows across two pages. Then I have to have scrolling enabled.
And, just so you know if you copy text in this way, the copied text will probably have extra stuff. Namely, whatever is in the footer and header sections. It’s easy to delete, but it’ll be there and annoy you if you have a lot of pages copied.
Anyway, the important lesson here is to learn how to enable, or disable, the scrolling view. It’s under the VIEW menu (go figure!), and then under PAGE DISPLAY. Check it out sometime.
