More SOHO business owners are using PDF’s for paper and document storage, contract management and developing papers pertaining to their business. Many don’t understand what PDF technology is so I’ll address it here.
Portable Document Filing has been around a long time. Banks have been using PDF technology for years in data processing departments. Checks would get scanned in the banks’ computer and photocopied just in case if there was a minor discrepancy. From there, a photocopied PDF file was created on microfiche.
Then Adobe started expanding their software resources. They created software called “Adobe Acrobat Reader”. The Acrobat Reader allows for certain encoding factors to read documents in a photocopied PDF format and transport those documents regardless of orientation into the reader by converting them to PDF file(s). The module in Acrobat Reader opens up similar to a book. It also has various other functions including speech to text recognition.
Many documents in the business world are emailed in PDF form. Now that laws have changed to certify PDF documents as “legal” documents, more businesses are using these documents as contracts and agreements. You should have a copy of Adobe Acrobat on your computer and if not, go to www.adobe.com to download the latest version.
You can also set the document for editing purposes. You can configure Acrobat to not set any editing changes or you can create fields on the document that can be edited by another person or party. Usually, documents are sent to you in non-editing mode. Acrobat documents can be formatted as forms and questionnaires. Colorful brochures can also be in PDF format.
You can create your own PDF documents on line through www.Adobe.com. You can PDF your documents up to five times free before a charge is incurred. Then, to create more PDF documents, you have to buy the Abode Acrobat Professional Package. This gives you unlimited PDF generation for books, manuals and special papers that you want archived or produced.
You can also produce and read e-books with a module that fits right into Acrobat Reader. You must install a plug in that you can download from the Adobe Web-Site (www.adobe.com) to activate the Digital Reader Edition.
There are other PDF readers and software that you can obtain but Adobe is the most widely used by SOHO’s.
