How can multiple users simultaneously edit an Adobe Acrobat PDF? - pdf

Is it possible for multiple users to simultaneously add call-outs, comments, and text boxes to a PDF in Adobe Acrobat? We have a PDF printout of a web portal that has been marked up by our supervising engineer--three of us will be addressing the markups at the same time (there are a lot of markups).
Anytime a markup is addressed, we will be adding an Addressed call-out or adding a sticky note to explain in detail the changes that were made. To prevent overlap, we would like to simultaneously edit the PDF so we see each other's Addressed markups.
This feature is available in BlueBeam Revu; however our office does not carry any BlueBeam licenses.

You can use "Send for Shared Commenting" using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC then Reader users can participate. When hosted on a compatible server... like a webDAV server or SharePoint, multiple users can comment at the same time. The comments will synchronize automatically or you can trigger it to sync manually. Everyone will see everyone else's comments and can reply to them.

Related

Streaming large PDFs from SharePoint

I have a client that wants to store large PDFs (>700MB) on SharePoint 2013. The problem is that viewing the PDF is currently requiring the entire PDF to be download before displaying the first page. I need the browser to display each page of the PDF as it downloads, a feature I believe Adobe calls "Fast Web View" or "Byte Streaming". Here is what I know:
"Fast Web View" is enabled on the PDF document in the Document Properties window.
I can verify that the PDF is "Linearized" by reading the ASCII content.
I have checked the PDF reading options from the PDF Accessibility.
The client has SharePoint 2013 on premise installed.
SharePoint's File Handling is set to permissive.
I have verified PDF is an AllowedInlinedownedMinme type of the Web Application.
Anything else I should check or configure?
It is not enough if the PDF files are linearized (technical term in PDF parlance) or optimized for fast web view (marketing term for that feature).
There need to be two conditions met before taking advantage of fast web view working for the end user:
The PDF viewer needs to be able to make use of the linearized/optimized PDF file features.
The PDF serving remote host (in this case SharePoint) needs to be properly configured to honor 'byte range requests' by the viewer, so downloading chunks of the PDF file may be delivered "out of order".
However,...
...I do not know if SharePoint servers in general do support the second requirement;
...if SharePoint is not the problem, you may want to check which PDF viewer is actually in use in that environment (test it with Adobe Reader -- that one takes advantage of linearized PDF features for sure).
See also this answer to a question from today, which gives a few more technical details:
How are PDF files able to be partially displayed while downloading?
A co-worker identified the problem after comparing the download from SharePoint to that of a working site using WireShark. The SharePoint site didn't include "Byte ranging" in the response headers. In order to enable that feature in SharePoint, you have to enable BlobCache. Beware, BlobCache is not supported in SharePoint foundations.

PDf viewer without download option

i have some pdf files which i'd like to upload on my association site thus i'd like them not to be able to download it as it may content some slightly sensitive information .
So ok they could ctrl+c but that would reduce the spreading of the information not to have them locally
php/js w/e
thanks
quoted answer from a similar question, if you' re using Adobe pdf viewer:
You can NOT prevent users from saving ANY TYPE of document from the web - PDF, HTML, JPEG, etc. It's a "feature" of the web.
What you CAN DO is prevent users from being able to use the PDF once it hits their own disk. To do this, you use powerful Digital Rights Management solutions...:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/5158866

Tracking Interactive PDF Clicks

I came across a curious question today, asked by my boss. Is it possible to track the clicks to pages inside an interactive PDF without it being embedded in a web page?
The client wants the user to download a PDF from his/her website and track what pages the user is clicking on inside the downloaded PDF.
After searching around on google for a while all I kept getting was links to pages telling you how to track PDF downloads.
Anyone who can shed some light on this or offer me a definitive yes or no to this question would be greatly appreciated.
The Javascript for Acrobat API Reference makes note of this event (page 368 of the API reference):
Page/Open
4.05
This event occurs whenever a new page is viewed by the user and after page
drawing for the page has occurred.
The target for this event is the Doc.
This event does not listen to the rc return code.
This would imply to me that you can hook this event and (assuming the end user permits the communication) send info to your web server every time they change pages.
Obviously this is limited to when the user is reading in Acrobat (Reader or Professional); it will not work if they are reading directly in Chrome or Firefox. And to re-emphasize, Acrobat will prompt the user to ask if it is allowed to communicate with an external website. If the user denies it, no tracking.
As it has already been stated, the PageOpen event would be the hook for tracking pages. But as this works only for (Acrobat) JavaScript enabled viewers, which at that moment have an internet connection available, those stats would be suboptimal.
We also have to point out that this kind of tracking is highly questionable from the point of view privacy (in Europe, this may even be illegal).
A little bit less questionable could be to chop up the document into single pages, add navigation links, and then use the server stats.

How to check if an email attachment has been opened

I am working on a study that sends people a PDF document with information about their health. The team would like to know if the person has actually opened the PDF document (a sign that they didn't just ignore the e-mail). I know that it'd be possible to do it with a link to an external file, but the users are much less likely to click on a URL and download it then they are to just view an attachment, and we don't want to do anything that might prevent the users from reading the information (we've already had people say they never received the message, and with further investigation they discovered they had, they had just ignored it).
Another option is to request a read report, but this is only useful if it doesn't annoy the user (ie it does it automatically when the email is opened instead of requesting them to send one). We're currently looking into this as well, but the ability to check if the attachment has been opened is a much better idea.
The email is generated in MS SQL and sent using the database mail system, and we have adobe acrobat pro, so creating scripts in pdfs is possible (although I'm not sure whether those scripts will be allowed to run).
Thanks
1) Dont include the PDF in the email, include a link to the PDF.
or
2) Include a javascript snippet in the PDF, which hits a per-user URL or includes IP address or something to track. This will only work if the user allows javascript, and if their pdf reader supports it.
See
http://ask.metafilter.com/153206/Is-it-possible-to-track-where-a-PDF-file-goes-once-in-the-wild
Since this was originally posted there has been a number of consumer tools that now let you track PDF's sent via a web link.
http://docsend.com , http://attach.io
and if you're sharing from Dropbox
http://orangedox.com
Much easier than having to script it yourself
At this time there are a number of tools available who offer attachment tracking service to their users. I am also using SalesHandy for attachment tracking and get the deep analysis of when & where your attachment is open.
Click to read more: https://www.saleshandy.com/document-tracking/

Tracking through PDF

I am exporting a document as a PDF. It is kept on a publicly accessibly website so that any users can download and read it. Now I want to track this. e.g. "How many times the PDF got opened."
Note that my question is not to track while I download, we need to track when the PDF is opened. Is there any kind of script that is invoked when the PDF is opened so that Adobe Acrobat Reader sends the details to my server?
These are the details I would like:
IP
Date/Time
Possbilly GEO Location.
Yes, you can probably do this. PDF includes a Javascript API, which some (but not all) PDF readers implement. I'm only certain of Acrobat and Foxit Reader doing this, and it can be turned off in both, for security and privacy reasons. That said, it's probably your best shot.
I glanced through the Javascript for Acrobat API Reference, and it looks like you could register for the "Page/Open" event (page 368 in my copy), and on receiving the first one of those, make a Net.HTTP call (page 548) to a web server you're running. That will get you the date/time and the public IP of the client reading the document, from which you can get a geolocation using a service like GeoIP.
I'm not sure this is possible. Although PDF can execute Javascript, reader software is naturally paranoid about malware being embedded in "benign" documents, so the execution context is quite restricted, with warnings shown about possible dangerous activity.
See previous SO question Can my PDF ping my server when it is opened?