With Nitro Pro, you can use grids to assist you in precisely lining up links, form fields, and other objects on a page. When turned on, the grid is visible over your PDF pages; however, grid lines will not be printed when you print your document. You can also customize the grid’s display, setting preferences such as default units, line color, spacing, and other options.

The following topics provide background information for Nitro Pro, and describe technical matters related to PDF files:

Just like attaching a paper file to another with a paperclip, the Attach File annotation tool enables you to attach electronic files to your PDFs files. Annotation attachments appear as a paperclip icon on the PDF page; reviewers can double-click the icon to open the file. You can view annotation attachments in the Commenting pane and the Attachments pane.

The Create Page Links tool lets you automatically turn all numbers on an area of the page into active hyperlinks that will link each number to the corresponding page in the document. It’s ideal for making sections of documents, like the table of contents and index, more intelligent and easier to use. It’s simply a matter of selecting the part of the page or range of pages you want to scan, and then running the tool to turn them into active links .

Repetitive tasks involving one or several documents can be automated with the Batch Processing tool.

Nitro Pro supports field calculations using several methods. The built-in calculation formulas are an easy means for creating simple, and quite restricted, field calculations. You can also use Simplified Field Notation and JavaScripts, although these methods are much more sophisticated and require some programming knowledge. If your calculation needs are limited to summing or averaging data, you can use the built-in formulas without having to worry about programming.

Digital IDs let you encrypt files that can only be opened and used by people who have exchanged certificates. Certificate-based security has many advantages over password-based security: documents can be opened without the need to remember passwords, Digital IDs cannot be shared or copied easily, the one document can contain different security settings for each recipient of a file. For example, you may grant one person editing and printing privileges, while another is limited to just viewing the file.

With Nitro Pro, you can update the color space of each image individually.

To change the page display options:

When you receive feedback from multiple participants, each in a different copy of the original PDF file, you may find it helpful to merge these comments into a single PDF file for easier review.

An object that can be used when setting a color in other JavaScript methods and properties.

The Comments Pane gives you a centralized place to see and organize all of your annotations. It lists each comment, its type, reviewer name, date added, and the text included in any pop-up notes and text boxes.

Reporting all the modifications made to a document is a difficult task if changes weren’t tracked during the editing process. Comparing the new document with its original version is the easiest way to pinpoint every single change that was made. To compare two versions of the same document, convert them to PDF in Nitro Pro and use the Compare tool to identify any differences in text, images, and even annotations.

JavaScripts can be copied and pasted from one field or other location in a PDF document or between two documents. If you examine PDF files for learning JavaScript programming, you can browse PDF files containing scripts, copy a script from a document you download from the Internet, and paste the code into the JavaScript Editor in your document. With a little code modification, you can quickly add scripts to your own files.

The Auto Build Bookmarks feature can totally automate the creation of bookmarks in your PDFs, and with very little effort greatly enhance the usability of the PDFs you publish. Use it to auto-generate bookmarks based on the font styles (headings, chapters, etc.) and the layout used in your PDFs. You can also use it to build bookmarks based on the textual and numerical content of the PDF files by using the text masking and wildcards features.

You can create bookmarks by selecting text on a page and making it a bookmark, or by adding an untitled bookmark and then setting and naming it in the Bookmarks pane.

In almost all cases you should use unique field names when creating form fields. If you use the same name for a field, like a text field, data typed in the field box is replicated for all fields with the same name. The exception to the rule is when creating check box and radio button fields. If you want one check box or radio button in a group to be unchecked as another check box or radio button is checked, you use the same field name. Both these field types have an option for adding an export value. When you create fields with the same name, you use different export values to distinguish one choice from another.

Combo Boxes provide users a drop down menu, and only a single response can be selected from this menu. You can add menu items for combo boxes via the Options category in the field’s Properties.

The most common field type on PDF forms is the text field. Text fields permit respondents to add alpha text and/or numeric values. You can format text fields in a number of different ways to ensure fields are completed properly. You can add custom format scripts, validate data, assign actions, and perform calculations on text fields.

Represents a PDF form field, and this object contains methods and properties that provide a way to modify form fields (like you would visually with the form field tools) via JavaScript code.

You can control what links look like, including what color they are when visible, as well as how the link will appear when clicked on. If you need to you can also lock your links so each link keeps its position and properties.

Nitro Pro is designed to include more powerful tools while being easier to use than previous versions. Features are grouped into task-based tabs, enabling you to quickly start working with your PDF file and spend less time looking for the tool you need.

You can use Nitro Pro to extract all of the images in your PDF documents into individual image files, which can then be reused in other programs. This process helps you extract images from a range of pages, whole PDF files, or a collection of files.

The Extract Image feature lets you copy images out of PDF files for reuse in Nitro Pro or other applications.

Represents a PDF form field, and this object contains methods and properties that provide a way to modify form fields (like you would visually with the form field tools) via JavaScript code.

Nitro Pro lets you fill-out interactive PDF forms, which are designed for you to enter data into fields. To fill-out the fields of an interactive form, use the Hand Tool to click into the form fields.

The form creation tools are all located on the Forms ribbon in Nitro Pro. There are several field types available; for each field type, you can set a variety of options through the form field Properties dialog box or ribbon.

Allows you to share data across an instance of the PDF viewing application (i.e. data can be accessed from within any of the open documents).

Select one of the following tasks to start working with Nitro Pro:

To view a PDF document without comments displayed on the page, you can hide all comments at once, rather than closing or deleting each comment manually. The same control lets you show all comments.