How to track document reviews in PDF files.
Do you want to learn how to keep track of who has reviewed and edited your PDF files and when? There are a few ways you use Adobe Acrobat to track and monitor PDF document reviews. What’s more, you can use Adobe Acrobat online services or Adobe Acrobat downloaded to your device. Read on. You’ll learn about PDF reviewing features, and how to track PDF document reviews.
What you’ll learn
- The benefits of PDF document reviews
- PDF reviewing features
- Setting PDF reviewing permissions
- Sending PDFs for review with Adobe Acrobat
- Using the cloud to track PDF document reviews
- The PDF Tracker in Adobe Acrobat Standard and Adobe Acrobat Pro
- Tips for managing PDF document reviews
The benefits of PDF document reviews.
PDFs are an efficient, adaptable, and secure way to collaborate on reviewing document content — whether you want feedback on documents and contributions from people sitting in an office with you, or at a completely different location.
When you review PDF files, you have the benefit of —
- Collaboration.
Multiple users can review the same PDF document simultaneously, regardless of their physical location. This helps to facilitate much better collaboration and document review processes.
- Efficiency.
Reviewing electronic PDF documents can be more efficient and cost-effective than paper-based reviews. The need for printing, distributing, and manually collating feedback is eliminated, saving you time and resources.
- Accessibility.
PDF documents are widely accessible across different platforms and devices. This ensures that your reviewers can access and review your documents whatever operating system or device they use. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader can be used on both computers and mobile phones to annotate and review PDF files, and PDFs can be reviewed in browsers and by using Adobe Acrobat online.
- Security.
You have PDF security features to allow or disallow changes that reviewers of your document may make. Protected by PDF password protection, this helps to safeguard content during the review process.
PDF reviewing features.
You, and your reviewers, have a lot of tools at your fingertips to markup text and annotate and review PDF files.
Using the Edit a PDF tool, you can choose settings to allow others to —
- Add comments and sticky notes
- Add highlights to text
- Strike through or underline text
- Add signatures or initials
- Draw around text or objects
- Insert and replace text or objects
- Change the colour and add comments to markups
- Use @mention in your comments to draw an individual’s attention to specific content
- And more.
Setting PDF reviewing permissions.
As the creator of a PDF document, you have control over the changes you will allow other people to make to your file. This includes the ability to edit PDF text, comment and add annotations to a PDF, insert, delete, and rotate pages, fill in form fields and sign PDF files.
To access the security properties for PDF files, after opening the file you can either —
- Go to the Tools menu and select Protect a PDF and then “Set security properties”
- Or from the Menu select Protection > Security properties.
Sending PDFs for review with Adobe Acrobat.
When you send PDFs for review with Adobe Acrobat, you can use the Adobe Document Cloud to store and share your PDF file with others safely and securely. If your reviewers don’t have any of the Adobe Acrobats downloaded and installed, they don’t need to. They’ll be able to review your PDF file in their browser.
Also, not only can you track and manage PDF reviews online, but you’ve also got access to a wide range of other PDF features and tools such as the ability to convert files to and from PDF, merge PDF files, split PDF files, and, of course, edit PDFs online, and much more.
Try it out. To send files and track reviews of a PDF with Adobe Acrobat —
- Log into Adobe Acrobat online or open your Adobe Acrobat application.
- From the top menu, bar go to Documents.
- Select the PDF file you want to send for review or upload a PDF file from your device.
- Choose from the options to
Using the cloud to track PDF document reviews.
You can track PDF document reviews on the files you have in Adobe Document Cloud from within an Adobe Acrobat app or Adobe Acrobat Online.
After you have shared your PDF file, in Adobe Acrobat online or in your Adobe Acrobat application, click on Documents > Shared by You. You’ll be able to see —
- the names and total number of people you have shared the file with
- the number of people who have viewed the file
- a timestamp that shows the last activity on the file
You can also unshare a PDF file here from here if you choose.
The PDF Tracker in Adobe Acrobat applications.
With the PDF tracker available to you in Adobe Acrobat Standard and Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can choose whether to distribute and save files on an internal server location, such as a local network, a web server, or a SharePoint site.
- From the
- Select your server location.
- Choose files to share from the appropriate folder locations.
- Select from options to initiate reviews.
- Use the Tracker to monitor and manage responses.
Tips for managing PDF document reviews.
Here are a few tips for managing your PDF document reviews —
- Set security.
Remember to set your PDF security to enable or limit changes to your document.
- Communicate clearly.
Encourage the use of @mention in comments to ensure individual attention.
- Review the reviewers.
See all comments in a PDF, and sort and filter, by going to Tools > Add Comments
Search comments for keywords or phrases
Spellcheck comments in a PDF before you distribute or complete a review
- Choose what comments to print and how.
Review your print settings to create comment summaries
- Compare PDF files.
Compare multiple versions of the same PDF by going to Tools > Compare Files
Related content.
Are you keen to keep learning? Here are some other articles to help with using PDFs —
- How to make an interactive PDF
- How to use remote collaboration tools and features in PDFs
- PDF security: Protect your sensitive content and information
