Like any tool, Adobe Acrobat is easier to work with (and more efficient) if you take the time to customize some of its key settings.
First, you should begin by customizing Acrobat’s Interface, which is best explained in this blog post by Adobe’s Rick Borstein.
Also, you should tweak the preference settings. To access the preference pane on a Windows computer select Edit > Preferences. On a Mac choose Adobe > Preferences. From there you’ll see several categories, grouped in tabs. Here are the one I recommend you adjust:
Commenting
- Enable “Copy selected text into Highlight…” (as a lawyer you want this, trust me).
- Disable “Always use Log-in Name for Author name” (only seems to work in Acrobat X)
Documents
- Review “Documents in recently used list” to see if you want to change it to more docs (you can only increase it to 10).
- Review Redaction to see if you like the default suffix (“_Redacted”). I’d recommend you leave it.
General
- Enable “Use single-key accelerators to access tools.”
- Review Application Startup and disable “Show welcome screen” if it annoys you. I don’t like seeing it, but you might not mind.
Page Display
- Review Page Layout and Zoom settings, and adjust to your preferences (but keep in mind that specific settings in a PDF will override your application settings.
Identity
- Review your identity information, and fill out as many fields as make sense for you.
Email Accounts (Acrobat XI only)
- Review and add any accounts you want to allow Acrobat to send from (Acrobat XI now supports gmail and yahoo email accounts).
Updater
- Consider if you want Acrobat to automatically download updates. Why wouldn’t you? If so, leave it as is.