If you write articles, publish books and e-books, prepare documentation or just want to send a document that can be read across many computing platforms, you are considering or already using the Adobe PDF format. This universal format has become the standard for publishing electronic documents that can be e-mailed or posted to a web site.

While the default settings will create a decent PDF file, here are five mistakes that you may be making and not even realize. These won’t render your file unreadable, but they can cause your readers to not get as much from your document.

There is a common myth that says "if you put a document in PDF format, it can’t be changed by anyone". Not true. Too many people have heard this story and believed it that this ranks as the number one mistake. You can secure a PDF document from changes, but to do so you must activate the security features and provide a password. You can also prevent readers from copying sections of the document through another security setting. It is important to secure your document properly.

In any document longer than 2-3 pages, you should use the bookmark feature of the software to set quick jump points for each major section of the document. The great thing about this feature is that your reader can then jump to what they think is important, not necessarily the order you have written in. It makes the document more useful to the reader when bookmarks are properly set.

Acrobat PDF files allow you to have live web links embedded in the document, but too many people don’t use them. This feature allows you to refer to a web site or web page in your document and if the reader is interested, they click on the link and their browser opens to the page specified. This gives you the ability to provide additional updated information on a web site or direct the reader to another resource that would be of use to them. With an advanced technique, you can even include web links in headers and footers so each page gives them a connection back to a web site.

If you are going to set bookmarks, then you should make sure that when the reader opens the document, they see the bookmarks and can use them right away. But unless you set the open options to display the list of bookmarks when the file is opened, the bookmarks are hidden on a tab that most people don’t know is even there. Set the options so that the document opens with the bookmarks beside it, ready for use.

In the title bar at the top of the screen, Acrobat by default will put the name of the file. The file name may not be a good description of the document, so instead, set the title of the document. Then, in the open options, set the option that uses the document title instead of the file name at the top of the screen.

By avoiding these five mistakes, your e-documents will stand out from the crowd.

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© 2003 Dave Paradi