Archive folders full of e-mail as PDF

Excerpted from “Adobe Acrobat 7 In the Office” by Donna Baker

If your Microsoft Outlook inbox is overflowing, why not create archives of your important e-mails by converting them to Adobe® PDF with Adobe Acrobat® 7? You can even convert entire folders with a single click.

The simplest way to convert e-mails to PDF in Microsoft Outlook is by using the Outlook PDFMaker, a menu and toolbar used for converting files to PDF that is installed in Outlook automatically as part of the Acrobat 7 installation process. When you specify conversion settings, the settings are used by default until you change them. For example, if you use the View Adobe PDF Result option, the document opens in Acrobat each time you create a new PDF file from an e-mail or a folder of e-mails. Before converting files, take a minute to check the conversion settings.

Note: If you are working with a different e-mail program, convert the files to PDF from Acrobat; you can still use the conversion settings described in this section.

Adjust conversion settings

Before converting any files, modify the conversion settings. Follow these steps to adjust the settings:

1. In Outlook, choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings to open the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog (Figure 1).

   

   Figure 1: Choose settings for conversion before creating PDF files from e-mails.

2. On the Settings tab, choose options for conversion based on how you need to use the e-mails.

3. Select the Security tab and add by adding security later in Acrobat, when the security settings you want. you are finished with the documents.

4. Click OK to close the dialog.

Choose conversion options

By default, the PDFMaker uses the Acrobat 5 Compatibility option. If you leave the Acrobat 5 option, your recipients using Acrobat Reader version 5 and above, as well as Acrobat versions 5 and newer can view the content. Use the default if you’re unsure whether your viewers all have the latest version of Acrobat or Adobe Reader®.

You can choose to include attachments or not using options from the Attachments pull-down list. If you want attachments included in the converted e-mails, leave the default option.

The next three check boxes pertain to how and when the converted document is displayed. If you want to convert batches of files and folders, deselect the View Adobe PDF Results option to save time. Otherwise, each time you convert a folder, it opens in Acrobat. If you intend to use the bookmarking process in Acrobat, leave the two bookmark options checked—“Add bookmarks to Adobe PDF” and “Open bookmark pane by default when PDF is opened.”

Leave the Page Layout options at their default settings. Using these options, the converted e-mails are shown on letter-sized pages with standard margins and a portrait orientation. With this basic page layout, you and you clients can easily print PDF versions of the e-mails.

Now it's time to convert the files. Drum roll, please!

Process the files

Converting folders of e-mails in Outlook to PDF is a simple one-click process. Follow these steps to create the PDF:

1. Select the folder for conversion in the All Mail Folders listing in Outlook.

2. On the PDFMaker toolbar, click the Convert selected folder to Adobe PDF icon. The Save Adobe PDF File As dialog opens.

3. You'll see the name of the folder is shown as the PDF filename (Figure 2). Leave the default name or type an alternate name, and select a folder location.

   

   Figure 2: Choose a name and storage location for the file.

4. Click Save to dismiss the dialog.

5. The Creating Adobe PDF dialog opens (Figure 3), and you see a progress bar as the files are processed. The dialog includes the name of the mail folder. As each file is processed, the mail subject is shown on the dialog as well. When the PDF document is assembled, the dialog closes automatically.

   

   Figure 3: You see information about the file processing in this dialog.

6. Continue to process the remaining e-mail folders.

It's simple to add additional content to an existing PDF version of your e-mail files in Outlook using another PDFMaker tool.

Append e-mail documents to PDF files

Unless you are archiving e-mails for storage, managing a folder of e-mail on a specific thread or topic is an ongoing process, and the ability to add new content to an e-mail is an important element for successfully managing your e-mails. Rather than manually converting individual e-mails to a new PDF, opening the existing e-mail PDF in Acrobat, and then appending the new e-mail PDF to the file, you can use a PDFMaker tool in Outlook to automatically add new content to e-mails.

Note: If you aren't working with Outlook, you will have to follow the manual conversion method described in the previous paragraph.

Although the following steps describe appending an e-mail to an existing PDF e-mail file, the same principle applies regardless of the content of the PDF you are appending to. That is, instead of appending an e-mail to another PDF e-mail file, you can append an e-mail to any PDF file you like.

Follow these steps to include another e-mail in an existing PDF document:

1. Select the e-mail message to be appended to an existing PDF.

2. Click Convert and append selected messages to an existing Adobe PDF The Save Adobe PDF File As dialog opens.

3. Select the file to which you want to append the new e-mail.

4. Click Open to dismiss the dialog and process the document.

Convert a single e-mail to PDF

It is certainly possible to convert a single e-mail to a PDF document in Outlook as well. Follow these steps to create the PDF:

1. Select the e-mail message in your e-mail program's folders.

2. Click Convert selected messages to Adobe PDF on the PDFMaker toolbar.

3. In the Save Adobe PDF File As dialog, name the document and select its storage location. Click Save to dismiss the dialog and save the PDF document.

View converted e-mail documents

In this section, you'll see how Acrobat converts information from the e-mails, such as the sender or date, into bookmarks.

Note: If you aren't working with Outlook but have used Acrobat's Binder feature to create PDF versions of your e-mail files, you'll find a single bookmark added to the binder for each e-mail in the file. You won't have the multiple bookmark arrangement described in this section.

Open one of the converted e-mail folders in Acrobat. When the document opens, you’ll see both the first e-mail as well as the Bookmarks pane (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Acrobat adds a set of bookmarks to the e-mail documents.

Bookmarks are arranged by Acrobat in four categories:

• Arranged by Date

• Arranged by Sender

• Arranged by Subject

• Personal Folders (which refers to the Outlook folder structure)

Use the bookmarks to locate a specific e-mail in a PDF. The same information derived from the e-mails is organized in the bookmarks in different ways. For example, if you remember the subject of an e-mail, click the (+) to the left of the Arranged by Subject bookmark heading to see the content listed alphabetically by subject line. If you remember the date (in the figure all e-mails have the same date because they were created for this demonstration), click the (+) to the left of the Arranged by Date bookmark to see the content arranged chronologically.

What if you can't remember the date and don't know the subject? Not to worry. You don't have to open all the bookmark categories—just use Acrobat's Search feature.

Search e-mail PDF files

It is true that it takes a bit of time to construct a set of PDF documents from your e-mails. If you need to information in those e-mails, however, you'll be glad you made the effort! Unlike searching e-mails in your e-mail program, which can be frustrating and imprecise, Acrobat's Search feature lets you words or phrases in any number of e-mail PDF documents and files, regardless of the method used to create the files.

Follow these steps to search one or more PDF e-mail files:

1. Click Search on the File toolbar in Acrobat. The File toolbar is one of the default toolbars. If you have closed it, choose View > Toolbars > File to open it.

2. The Search PDF window opens at the right side of the program window. The window is locked to the right of the program window—you can widen the Search PDF window, but you can't collapse its width.

3. Type the search term you want to word or phrase would you like to search for?” field on the dialog (Figure 5).

   

   Figure 5: Type the word or phrase you want to find in the dialog and specify the search location.

4. Click one of two location radio buttons, either to search the current PDF document open in Acrobat or to search a location on your hard drive or server.

5. Choose other criteria for searching if you wish, such as searching for whole words, using case-sensitive options, or searching bookmarks and comments.

6. Click Search in the Search PDF window.

7. The search is performed and the results displayed on the Search PDF window (Figure 6). You see the search term(s) listed, as well as the locations Acrobat searched.

   

   Figure 6: Results from the search are listed in the window by document name and page number.

8. In the Results area, click the (+) to the left of a document name to open its list of matches. If you move your pointer over a listing, you see the page number in a tooltip.

9. Click a results listing to display the document in Acrobat. The results in the document. search result is highlighted in the document.

10. Click Hide to close the Search PDF window.

    Note: You can also perform advanced searches to specify other criteria for searching.

Excerpted from “Adobe Acrobat 7 In the Office” by Donna Baker © 2005 Donna Baker. Published by Pearson Education, Inc. and Adobe Press. To buy this book, visit www.peachpit.com.

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