Open PDFs with Microsoft Word

Did you know that you can open PDFs in Microsoft Word 2013 for Windows? Just choose File > Open, select a PDF, and you’ll see the following dialog box before the PDF is converted to editable Word text:

PDFs that have complex layout will change in appearance significantly. If you don’t have the original fonts, they will be automatically be substituted with fonts on your system. In my limited tests, the conversion was far from perfect. But if you are working in Word, and just need to crack open a PDF to copy and paste some text, this could be useful.

As you would expect, PDFs that have password security applied can’t be opened with Word.

You can read more about this feature here.

Alas, this feature isn’t in Word for Mac 2011 (the latest version). 

For an alternate way to convert PDFs to Word, see PDF2Office (and PDF2ID) from Recosoft. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can open the PDF in Acrobat Pro and choose File > Save As Other > Microsoft Word.

The easiest way to share photos and videos with family, friends, and co-workers

Dropbox is essential to running my business. Its incredibly useful in so many ways. I like it so much that I authored a series of training videos called "Up and Running with Dropbox" for Lynda.com.

One of my favorite Dropbox features is the ability to share folders of images and video with any user, anywhere (they don't need a Dropbox account) with just a couple of clicks.

This is a fast, simple, low-overhead alternative to photo-sharing services such as Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug or Shutterfly. Watch the free excerpt from my Lynda.com course below to learn how.

2 free upcoming DPS Webinars

I’ll be doing two webinars for Adobe in the next few weeks.

1. Four Ways to Add Animation to Adobe DPS Apps on April 22

There are four ways to make things move on the screen in Adobe DPS apps: video clips, image sequences, animated slide shows, and HTML content from programs such as Adobe Edge Animate.

In this Webinar, you will see:

• The pros and cons of each approach
• When to use each method
• How to optimize animation for the best performance
• Examples of each method in use in the real world

… and more!

2. Working with Video Content in Adobe DPS Apps on May 20

Video content is one of the most desired features in many apps. Video content can be imported into Adobe InDesign CC, and then included in an Adobe DPS app. But there are many tips and techniques that can make this easier for you.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How to prepare video for use in Adobe DPS
• When to embed video vs. stream video from a website
• How to use video for introduction screens
• When to set video to play full screen vs. playing "in place" in your layout

… and more!

These webinars are free! See more details and register here.

Once on Newsstand, always on Newsstand

If you are considering whether or not your app should go in the Newsstand category in the Apple App Store, take this into account: Once you’ve published an app in the Newsstand category, there is no going back. Apple documents this here. Specifically, they say "If a Newsstand-enabled app version has the the Ready for Sale status, you cannot disable Newsstand for any current or future versions of that app."

I have a customer that has an app on Newsstand, and now, for business- and marketing-related reasons, they want to remove it from Newsstand. When we discovered that this couldn’t be done in iTunesConnect, I called Apple to see if there was some way that they could override or make this change on their end. The answer was a clear “no”. So it looks like if you have an app on Newsstand, the only way to get the app out of Newsstand is to remove the app from the App Store, and publish an entirely new App. This is a poor solution, since there is no way to “update” users from one app to another.

 

DPS to drop support of InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 in fall of 2014

Currently, InDesign CS5, CS5.5, CS6, and CC are equal citizens for production of Folio content for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite projects. In other words, there isn’t anything in the Folio Builder panel or the Folio Overlays panel that is different between these versions.

However, according to the “What’s new in this release” notes for DPS v30:

"Advance notice: DPS to drop support of InDesign CS5.5 and CS5 in v32: With the v32 release (tentatively scheduled for September 2014), InDesign CS5.5 and InDesign CS5 will still be able to create source documents for DPS, but uploading articles to the Folio Producer Service will require InDesign CS6 or later."

So, if you’re still on InDesign CS5 or CS5.5 and you work with Adobe DPS, you’re probably going to have to upgrade come fall. It is unclear from this notice if users of CS5/CS5.5 will still be able to create interactive overlays for DPS. The notice states that they “will still be able to create source documents for DPS”, because these are just InDesign files, of course. But I suspect that the Folio Overlays panel will get revised, and no longer function with CS5/CS5.5.