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Adobe Digital Editions Help

• Getting started
• Activation and authorization
• Library View and Reading View
• Adding items to the library
• Buying items online
• Borrowing library items
• Sorting the library
• All about bookshelves
• Removing items from the library
• Transferring items between computers
• Transferring items to a supported eReader
• Navigating PDF documents
• Navigating EPUB documents
• Finding text
• Bookmarks
• Printing
• Diagnostic info
• Shortcut keys
• Known issues

Getting started

You can install Adobe® Digital Editions on your system a number of different ways. The simplest is to visit the installer page, from which you can simply install Adobe Digital Editions. Alternatively, you may be prompted to install Adobe Digital Editions when buying or borrowing an item from the library. In this case, installation is part of the download process. Please close all open applications, particularly Adobe Acrobat® or Reader® software, prior to installing Adobe Digital Editions.

In both cases, you are first prompted to confirm that you know you are installing a "full privileges" application. Adobe Digital Editions is not only a web application but also a full-featured application that writes a few small files to your hard drive. Then you are prompted to approve the actual installation. After a quick download, Adobe Digital Editions launches, and you are prompted to accept the End-User License Agreement (EULA).

Activation and authorization

After installation, the Setup Assistant wizard prompts you to activate Adobe Digital Editions (you must be online during this process). During activation, you have the option to authorize your computer with an Adobe ID. If you don't have an Adobe ID, creating one is free and only takes a minute. The Adobe ID enables you to transfer items protected by digital rights management (DRM) between multiple computers or devices and restore them after a data loss or system reinstallation.

An Adobe ID also includes an Adobe membership, which gives you access to trial downloads, hundreds of free product extensions, and special community areas. It also allows you to view and manage your activity in the Adobe Worldwide Store.

Adobe strongly recommends that you authorize your computer at initial activation to protect your digital content. If you choose to authorize at a later time, you can do so by choosing Library > Authorize Computer.

After activation, any books, magazines, or other documents you previously bought with Adobe Acrobat® or Reader® software are migrated to Adobe Digital Editions. This is usually a relatively quick process. Adobe Digital Editions opens each item and reverifies its license to the user. If you don't have DRM-protected items, you don't need to be online during the migration. If you have a large number of items (for example, more than 100), then this process may take a while, but you will see a progress bar indicating the state of the migration as it proceeds.

Note: Items that you previously borrowed from a public library with Adobe Acrobat® or Reader® software are not migrated to Adobe Digital Editions. You need to return the library item and then borrow the item again with Digital Editions.

Adobe Digital Editions then does some housekeeping (setting up the manifest and application shortcuts) and launches.

Library View and Reading View

Once the application launches, you will see either Library View or Reading View. Library View provides a way to view and organize your collection of items. Reading View allows you to read, navigate, print, bookmark, and search your documents. Adobe Digital Editions always remembers where you were the last time you viewed a particular item and also what you were doing the last time you exited the program. The first time you enter the application, it goes automatically to Reading View if you are downloading an item, but if you are just starting it on its own, it takes you to Library View.

Both views contain three areas: the toolbar at the top, the main work area, and a collapsible pane on the left. The left pane can be closed by dragging or by double-clicking the small gray bar on the divider bar with the small gray triangle. You can reopen the left pane by double-clicking the divider bar again or by simply grabbing the bar and dragging it open.

In Library View, the main area is occupied by the items in your currently selected bookshelf. The left pane always contains the bookshelves themselves. Reading View includes a main document area, a toolbar at the top, and a Tab pane on the left. The Tab pane can show the Table of Contents (if the item has one) or the bookmarks (if there are any). You can toggle the left pane between these two by clicking the icons at the top of the left pane, just below the toolbar.

To move back and forth between Reading View and Library View, click the library or reading icons in the upper left of the toolbar (or use the appropriate shortcut key).

Adding items to the library

In Library View, you can add items to your library. There are several ways to add items:

• Use the menu selection Add Item (or its keyboard shortcut).
• Drag and drop files from your desktop or file browser.
• Download items from the Internet — from either e-commerce sites or one of the many public libraries that support Adobe Digital Editions.

When you add items, they are added to your general library. You can subsequently arrange them as you like (see "All about bookshelves"). There is no limit to the number or type of items you can have in your library.

You can get all the information about an item by selecting it and choosing Item Info from the context menu for that item (look for the small triangle). Item Info includes more metadata about the item, the permissions (number of copies or pages to print and so on), as well as the actual location of the item on your computer.

Note: If you add items from your computer by double-clicking them or by downloading them directly from the Internet (not via an e-commerce site or a library), the items will not be added to your library. You will be able to view them, but they will not be a part of your permanent library. Only items added by one of the three methods above will be added to your permanent library.

Buying items online

Buying items online consists of two parts: the e-commerce part in which you pay for the item and the subsequent downloading of the item to your computer. Once you have paid for your item or items and asked to have them downloaded, Adobe Digital Editions and the eBook site's server have a conversation during which the eBook server sends Adobe Digital Editions the item's content. You see a dialog box that says "Downloading" for a (usually) brief period. Then a second dialog box stating "Authorizing content" appears, during which time Adobe Digital Editions receives the ability to read the item that was just downloaded. Then your item opens.

Borrowing library items

You can borrow items from many public libraries for use with Adobe Digital Editions. The download process is very similar to buying items online except you don't have to pay for them. Once the item is in your library, you see a "banner" indicating how much time is left before the item expires. Once the item expires, it remains in your library, but you can't read it. You need to delete it in order to remove it from your library. You can also return items early if you have finished reading them. This is sometime desirable, as libraries limit the number of items that can be borrowed at one time. Simply click the Item Info menu and select Early Return.

Sorting the library

Once the items are in your library, there are two ways to view the content of any bookshelf. You can view thumbnails of your items. The thumbnail is the cover page of the item (or just the first page if it doesn't have a cover page). In this view, you see the set of thumbnails and some information about each item (author, title). You can also sort the order in which the items are shown by author, title, date created, number of pages, and so forth.

If you want to see more items at once or sort them more easily, switch to List Items mode. This mode shows a tabular view of the items in a given bookshelf. You can sort the list by clicking any of the column headers (such as Author or Number of Pages).

All about bookshelves

Bookshelves provide views of your library. Different bookshelves show you different views or selections from the complete collection of items in your library. The application has two kinds of bookshelves: smart and user defined. There are four smart bookshelves, which are defined by the application:

• All — Shows every item in your library
• Borrowed — Shows all the items in your library that have been borrowed from a library
• Purchased — Shows all the items in your library that you purchased and own
• Recently Read — Shows the items you have read in the last 30 days

You cannot affect or change the contents or conditions of smart bookshelves (except by adding items to or removing them from your library).

User-defined bookshelves are ones that you create and control. Creating them is easy. Simply click the "+" button at the bottom of the left pane, or choose Add Bookshelf from the Options menu, also at the bottom of the left pane. You can name a bookshelf any way you want, but it should probably be meaningful and not too long. To populate your bookshelf, you can drag items from any other bookshelf (including other user-defined bookshelves) and drop them on your new bookshelf. Note that this doesn't move them from one bookshelf to the other; it only copies them to the new bookshelf. There is no limit to the number of items in a user-defined bookshelf. To remove items from your bookshelf, select the item (it is highlighted with a light gray background) and press Delete. Alternatively, you can use the item's menu, which is accessible when the item is selected, via the small gray triangle in the upper left corner of the selected item.

Note: Some online bookstores sell items without DRM protection. This is rare, but it may become more common over time. At present, such items do not appear in the Purchased bookshelf.

Transferring items between computers

If you have authorized your computer, Adobe Digital Editions does not "lock" your eBooks and other digital publications to that computer — they are assigned to you through your Adobe ID. This means that you can transfer library items to up to six computers and six supported mobile devices.

Before you can transfer items between computers, you must authorize both computers with your Adobe ID.

Note: Bookmarks are not copied when items are transferred to another computer.

To transfer a library item to another authorized computer:

1. On the computer you're transferring from, locate and open the My Digital Editions folder, located inside the My Documents folder.
2. Choose the EPUB or PDF files that correspond to the eBook titles you want to transfer.
3. Copy the selected files to portable media such as a flash drive, or email the files to the target computer.
4. On the target computer, copy the EPUB or PDF files into the My Digital Editions folder within the My Documents folder.
5. Open Adobe Digital Editions on the target computer. Choose Library > Add Item, and then navigate to the My Digital Editions folder and select the new files to bring into the library.

Transferring items to a supported eReader

Adobe Digital Editions allows you to transfer items from your library to a supported eReader device.

Connect the supported eReader device to your computer and launch Digital Editions. Digital Editions automatically detects the presence of your device and offers to authorize it with your Adobe ID. If you have not authorized Digital Editions with your computer, you will need to complete that first (Digital Editions guides you through that process: View the Activation and Authorization topic). Both Digital Editions and the device must be authorized to be able to transfer protected content to and from the device. Unprotected content can be transferred to and from the device without authorizing either the device or Digital Editions, but Adobe strongly advises authorizing Digital Editions as it gives you content portability for your protected books, whether on Digital Editions or the supported device.

After authorization, the device appears as a new bookshelf in your library. You can transfer items to and from the device's bookshelf just as you do with other bookshelves in your library. You can read books that are on your device or your own computer. You can even read books off a friend's device (though you cannot transfer books from that device to your computer or vice versa).

Important: Do not disconnect the device while transferring library items to or from your computer.

Removing items from the library

There is a difference between deleting an item and removing an item from a bookshelf. Deleting the item, whether you are in a user-defined bookshelf or one of the smart bookshelves, deletes the item completely from your library. This action cannot be undone, so make sure that you want the item deleted and not simply removed. You are prompted to confirm that you intend to delete the item from your library.

Note: Deleting an item from your library does not delete the corresponding file from your computer. However, if you delete an item from the library on your supported eReader, the corresponding file is deleted from the device.

To remove an item from a user-defined bookshelf without deleting it from your library, choose Remove item from Bookshelf from the item context menu.

Navigating PDF documents

When you open a PDF document in Reading View, you see a toolbar with several elements:

• A page number/page count control, which allows you to enter the number of the page you want to go to
• A printer icon (which may be disabled if, for example, your item doesn't allow printing)
• The bookmark icon
• A series of four icons that represent the page display modes
• A field into which you can enter text you wish to find in the document

There are four modes of page display in which you can navigate:

• Fit Double Page — This shows you two pages at a time. You can go from page to page using menu items (click the word "Reading" on the left of the toolbar), the scroll bar buttons, or the Page Up and Down keys. You cannot scale the page (except by enlarging the window size) or scroll smoothly.
• Fit Single Page — This scales the page so that the entire page fills the viewing area. You can page through the document as you can with the Fit Double Page mode with menu items, buttons, or shortcut keys.
• Fit to Width — This scales the page so that it fills the entire width of the viewing area, but the height of the page may not be viewable. In this mode, you can page around as with the previous modes. You can also scroll smoothly with the small scroll bar buttons at the top and bottom of the scroll bar. Note that when you "page" using the Page Up and Down keys (for example), the view steps down by the size of page that is currently visible.
• Custom Fit — In this mode, the page is zoomed at a level you can choose. You can see two views of the page: the whole page in miniature in a small floating "widget," with a bright rectangle representing the zoomed portion of the page shown in the main document area. The zoomed portion fills the main document area. You can change the zoom level by adjusting the small scroll bar on the left side of the widget. This mode also allows you to page up and down, again by the size of the page that can be seen in the main document view. You can also scroll smoothly.

You can also navigate within the document using the Table of Contents, if the document has one.

Navigating EPUB documents

EPUB documents are composed of reflowable content (such as that on the web), unlike PDF documents, which are fixed in format. Instead of different view modes, the toolbar in Reading View has two "a" icons, which are used to change the size of the font used to display the item.

The toolbar contains the same page number/page count field, printer icon, and bookmark icon present when viewing PDF documents. Type a page number in the field and press Enter to go to that page. You can also navigate EPUB documents by using the normal page controls (menu, scroll bar, shortcut keys) or the Table of Contents (if the document has one).

Finding text

Finding text in a document (PDF or EPUB) is easy. Just click the find control on the toolbar, type the word or phrase you want to find, and press Enter. The application will find the first (or next) instance of the word in the current document, go to that page, and highlight the word or phrase. You can then hunt for the same word again by clicking the small right-pointing arrow to the right of the find control. To hunt backwards, click the left-pointing arrow. If the application reaches the end of the document without finding the word or phrase, it will display a small red bar telling you that it has reached the end of the document.

Bookmarks

You can add bookmarks to PDF or EPUB documents to allow you to quickly navigate around a document. Bookmarks appear in the left pane in Reading View, when the Bookmarks tab is selected.

To create a bookmark:

1. Navigate to the page where you want a bookmark.
2. (Optional) Select some text on the page.
3. Either click the bookmark icon on the toolbar, or click the plus (+) icon next to the Options menu at the bottom of the Bookmarks pane.
4. (Optional) In the Add Bookmark dialog box, enter text in the Notes area. The Excerpt section of the dialog box shows the text you selected in the document (if any).
5. Click OK.

A bookmark link is added to the left pane. A yellow rectangle icon to the left of the link indicates a bookmark with notes, and a pink icon indicates a bookmark without notes. If you selected text before creating the bookmark, the first line of the text appears in the bookmark link. If you added notes, the link also shows the first line of your notes (highlighted in yellow). In the document, bookmarked text is highlighted in yellow for bookmarks with notes, or pink for bookmarks without notes.

Any bookmarks you create are saved with your item and are opened with it next time you open the item.

To edit a bookmark, double-click it, and the dialog box will open again. You can then make any changes you want, including adding or deleting text in the note area.

To delete a bookmark, select the bookmark link in the Bookmarks pane and press Delete, select Delete Bookmark from the Options menu, or use the appropriate shortcut key.

Note: The bookmarks you add are Adobe Digital Editions bookmarks; they are not PDF bookmarks (which in Acrobat or Reader are added to your "bookmarks," and which in Adobe Digital Editions are represented as the Table of Contents).

Printing

Adobe Digital Editions supports printing (unless disallowed by the document itself). However, vector printing is not supported — instead, pages are printed as bitmaps, so the quality is not as sharp as if it were vectors. Also, for documents that contain SWF movie clips, only the initial frame of the movie prints, and it does not reflect any interactive changes you made in the movie clip inside Adobe Digital Editions.

Diagnostic info

When problems are encountered, the application does its best to tell you what the source might be so you can resolve it. There are three general categories of problems: downloading, document corruption, and incorrectly formatted documents.

When you download an item from the web, you may encounter problems in which the server is unresponsive or the application cannot get the proper authentication. Adobe Digital Editions normally displays a dialog box telling you something about the problem. The most common message is "I/O Error," which means that the application simply could not connect to the server from which it was supposed to get the item or its authentication information. This is most commonly a transient problem that is most easily resolved by simply trying again.

You may also run into situations in which the item you added to the library has been corrupted or deliberately or inadvertently deleted. In this case, the application displays a dialog box telling you the item is missing or corrupt. The book then appears in your library but has a "banner" (a strip of ribbon in the upper left corner of the item) that says "Missing." You can either try to restore the item to the place it used to reside or delete it and try to add a good copy of the item to your library.

The final category is a situation in which the document has some minor errors or warnings. These may arise, for example, because a PDF file uses features not supported by Adobe Digital Editions (for example, JPEG 2000 compression), or an EPUB document uses markup that is not recommended. In most cases, these minor warnings and errors do not produce any visible problems, but the document may not be rendered exactly as the author intended.

Shortcut keys

Known issues

• Migration can be slow for very large numbers (hundreds) of eBooks.
• Printing large documents can be relatively slow.
• Adobe Digital Editions does not support PDF's "named pages," for example, when the first 10 pages of a document are in Roman numerals and the rest are in Arabic numerals. All pages are referenced absolutely from 1.
• If you have explicitly associated Acrobat or Reader with the ETD file type (via the Tools/Options menu item, the Content tab, and the "Manage..." files button), then you must also explicitly remove this association.
• Searching for strings in PDF documents or navigating via a bookmark or annotation may not properly display the correct portion of the page in Fit to Width or Custom Fit page display modes.
• JPEG 2000 images are not supported.
• If you are using Kaspersky firewall protection, you may experience download problems. This is because Kaspersky perceives Adobe Digital Editions as malware and blocks it (this can happen with the Windows® firewall as well, but it is rare). Normally when you start a new application such as Adobe Digital Editions, Kaspersky asks if you want to make it a trusted app or process, but it doesn't do this with Adobe Digital Editions. Instead, you must explicitly tell Kaspersky to add Adobe Digital Editions manually to trusted applications. The rules you need to set for Adobe Digital Editions are to "Do not scan network traffic."
• On the Mac, no text entry cursor (I-beam) is displayed in the Note text field of the Edit Bookmark dialog box. This bug will be resolved in the next release.
• Users will occasionally see a "Session ID" error when authenticating a newly downloaded book. This is a known server-side issue that the Adobe Digital Editions team is working to resolve. The workaround is to retry the download.
• You cannot select across two pages in the two-up display mode. The workaround is to go to Fit mode, smooth scroll to get the text you wish to select visible on both pages, and then select it.
• Select All (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) is not supported.
• Extremely large images (greater than 50MB) can cause sluggish behavior in the application.
• Some advanced transparency rendering features (such as knockout, overprint, and nonseparable blend modes) are not supported in Adobe Digital Editions.
• Native PDF annotations are not supported by Adobe Digital Editions.

Next steps

• Download Adobe Digital Editions now
• Visit the sample eBook library