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Adobe Acrobat Pro DC: Adobe Acrobat Pro

Learn to create and edit PDF documents using Adobe Acrobat.

What is Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat is an optical character recognition (OCR) system. It is used to convert scanned documents, PDF documents, and image documents into editable/searchable documents. 

Though it has fewer language options than ABBYY FineReader, Adobe Acrobat Pro is a more pervasive software, partially because it is less academic and more business-oriented. It is available for both Mac and Windows machines, and includes apps for iOS, Android, and Windows.

Adobe Acrobat can analyze documents in a couple of ways:

  • Acrobat can analyze images as they are scanned into the program
  • Acrobat can also analyze already existing images, PDF files, or other file types after PDF conversion

Basic OCR Operations in Adobe Acrobat:

  • Open document in Acrobat as a PDF
  • Click 'Edit Text'
  • Program applies optical character recognition to the document
  • Document is now fully editable

With the resulting files being editable and searchable, researchers will be able to:

  • Copy, paste, and edit passages of text within the document
  • Search the text in PDF readers or word processing programs
  • Ingest the text into analysis programs like ATLAS.ti or NVivo
  • Make information easier to find via the Internet by creating searchable documents

How do I get Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat is available to Springfield College students, faculty, and staff through the Office of Information and Technology Services. If you do not have it installed on your device, contact the Technology Service Center at (413) 217-1075 or tsc@springfield.edu to get Adobe Creative Cloud installed.