Learn Adobe Acrobat

A Comprehensive Guide to Start Learning Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is the most common software application for reading, editing, and utilizing PDF files. Released by Adobe in 1993, Acrobat has become one of the world's most ubiquitous professional software applications and is utilized in almost all professional industries. There are two versions of the application, one freeware and the other a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Learning the functions of either version can improve your professional development. In this overview, you’ll learn more about Adobe Acrobat, what it can do, who uses it, and how to learn it to determine how to add this skill to your professional toolbox.

Discover how Adobe Acrobat, the most commonly used tool for digitizing and displaying PDF documents is essential for professionals across industries. This guide provides insights into different ways to learn Adobe Acrobat, free resources available, and the types of careers that commonly use this software.

Key Insights

  • Adobe Acrobat is a widely-used application for reading, displaying, and editing documents in PDF format, making it a crucial tool for cross-platform collaboration and design processes. It also plays an important role in securely authorizing, signing, and archiving important documents.
  • Adobe Acrobat offers robust tools for displaying documents on any device and is frequently used to store and share copies of essential documents. It is invaluable in any administrative position as it automates many routine documentation tasks.
  • While Adobe Acrobat skills won't be enough to find a new career, they provide valuable tools to help professionals succeed in a variety of industries, including business, healthcare, and law.
  • Learning Adobe Acrobat can improve workflow efficiency, enable the preservation of essential documents, and provide easy access to backing up important documents through Adobe's Cloud storage system.
  • Prospective students can learn Adobe Acrobat through in-person or online live training courses, on-demand courses, or free training resources. Noble Desktop offers several options for learning Adobe Acrobat, including their Adobe Acrobat Training course.
  • The salary for Adobe Acrobat professionals can vary widely depending on the industry and level of expertise. For example, a digital Media Specialist with Adobe Acrobat skills can earn an average salary of $52,000 per year, while a Graphic Designer with the same skills can earn around $45,000 annually.

Adobe Acrobat is the most commonly used tool for digitizing and displaying PDF documents. It is used in virtually every industry, and anyone working in a professional environment will likely benefit from learning to use Acrobat. If you’ve always wanted to learn Adobe Acrobat but can’t figure out how to get started, this guide is for you. Here, you’ll learn more about the various ways to learn Adobe Acrobat, free resources to take advantage of, and the types of careers that commonly use this clever software.

What is Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat is the most commonly used application for reading, displaying, and editing documents in Adobe’s portable document format (PDF). The PDF file extension is designed as a universal text and image display system that can display on any machine, regardless of what applications, hardware, or operating system you are using. Adding the extension makes Adobe Acrobat a vital tool for cross-platform collaboration and design processes. It is also essential for securely authorizing, signing, and archiving important documents, including transcripts, tax filings, and other legal documents. 

Adobe is also constantly striving to ensure that Acrobat is more than just a PDF reader. While there is a freeware version of the application to let any user read documents, Acrobat Pro lets users edit, manipulate, and otherwise prepare PDF documents for distribution. Importantly, it also allows users to convert PDFs to word documents, excel spreadsheets, or even jpegs, which is an integral part of optimizing specific professional processes. Between these features and essential quality-of-life benefits, such as combining documents into a single PDF, compressing PDFs, and automated features ensuring documents meet specific critical legal regulations, Adobe Acrobat is one of the most versatile and vital baseline tools available.

Read more about what Adobe Acrobat is and why you should learn it. 

What Can You Do with Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat is a versatile software program that lets users create and share PDF files that can be read and edited on almost any device. The program is important for both collaborative design work and for documenting and archiving important documents. Using Adobe Acrobat makes remote work more accessible and efficient since Acrobat includes authentication and documentation features that allow users to encrypt, protect, sign, and notarize documents without meeting with a signee in-person. These built-in collaboration features can improve both workflow efficiency and the kinds of work that is practical for a given company or organization.

Adobe Acrobat is also one of the most commonly used tools for archiving and preserving important documents. PDF readers can produce high-quality scans of physical documents and display them on almost any modern device. This ability makes Adobe Acrobat a valuable tool for making rare or sensitive documents more accessible to the public. It also ensures that individuals can easily create and access backup versions of physical documents they want to keep protected. Since Acrobat also has significant privacy and security features, learning Acrobat is an excellent way to ensure that these documents are appropriately protected when you need others to access them.

Careers that Use Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is used across a massive range of different industries because it is versatile in its functions. Any professionals who want to share and collaborate on documents will want to learn how to use Acrobat. In addition, Acrobat is frequently used to store and share copies of essential documents, create digital versions of sensitive or one-of-a-kind documents, or allow for improved online workflow by letting employees sign and notarize documents through email exchanges. While Adobe Acrobat skills won’t be enough to find a new career, they will provide students with valuable tools to help them succeed.

Some of the most common professional Acrobat users are business professionals who need to archive, collect, store, and transfer important files and documents. Acrobat offers robust tools for displaying documents on any device. PDF files are the most commonly used files for scanned documents, an essential method of creating replicable and transferable copies of physical documents. Making sure that reports are easily accessible and recorded is much easier working with Adobe Acrobat than with a tool like Word.

Acrobat is also essential to any administrative position, as it automates many routine documentation tasks. Any position that regularly requires employees to create, fill out, collect, or organize administrative records will almost certainly require knowledge of Adobe Acrobat since it makes the kind of data administration that undergird large firms possible. Jobs in health are perfect examples of those who need Adobe Acrobat for day-to-day functions. Medical administrators, for example, working at hospitals, must keep detailed records of thousands of forms that hundreds of different stakeholders fill out daily. Without Acrobat, the data entry alone from paper forms would be overwhelming. Thus, hospital administrative staff ideally has tools like Acrobat to make this part of their employment possible.

Acrobat is also helpful for anyone who needs to scan and create multiple copies of documents, images, files, or other non-digital information. For example, librarians may be tasked with digitizing holdings to make archives more accessible and less prone to deterioration. Lawyers and other employees within the justice system may quickly make copies of sensitive documents or transfer important information that is impossible to view in a word document or a jpeg image. Hiring managers must create PDFs of job materials for hundreds of applications to make this information accessible to search and digest. These are just a few of the myriad ways that Adobe Acrobat can help streamline workflow in unexpected places.

Why Learn Adobe Acrobat?

Since it is a versatile tool with many important functions, learning Adobe Acrobat will pay long-term dividends for anyone working in an office environment or a creative career field. Learning Adobe Acrobat will help you improve your workflow by bringing several important daily tasks under the same banner and allowing you to use one program to serve many different functions. While learning Adobe Acrobat isn’t enough to build a career, it is a skill that is useful in a significantly diverse range of career paths. Whether you are looking to annotate and comment on a file easily or compile many documents together for review, using Adobe Acrobat can make your life significantly easier.

Utilizing Adobe Acrobat to preserve important documents, particularly scanned documents, allows users to save space. Since 2015, Adobe has shifted to a Cloud storage system that lets users upload and store PDF documents, making them easier to access. The PDF format is also a viable way to save large numbers of documents so that they will be readily accessible regardless of where you intend to view them. This cloud system provides users with an easy way to collect disparate documents, combine related documents into a single file, or create backup copies of essential documents. The software allows business owners and private citizens to preserve and store copies of sensitive documents that they wish to keep safe: property deeds, marriage certificates, or other legally identifying information.

Read more about why you should learn Adobe Acrobat.

How to Learn Adobe Acrobat

Individuals wanting to learn Adobe Acrobat will have a few options available. Since it is a reasonably ubiquitous program, some courses will teach enrolled students basic Acrobat skills to prepare them for everyday application use. Other courses will provide the same students with more in-depth knowledge of advanced Acrobat skills, often taught alongside other commonly used Adobe professional programs. No matter how you want to learn the skill, there is an Adobe Acrobat class that suits your needs.

Potential students often find that they learn best in a live instruction environment since live instructors can assist students in overcoming challenges in their learning and guide them through Acrobat’s features. Personalized learning benefits gaining software skills like Adobe Acrobat since students wishing to learn this application likely want to do so quickly. Learning with a live instructor can help ensure that students don’t get stuck on an issue and linger too long on any given aspect of their learning. Prospective class members can enroll in live Adobe Acrobat training courses in-person or online.

Prospective students interested in learning Acrobat at their own pace or who don’t want to wait for a training seminar to become available may wish to enroll in an on-demand Acrobat course. These self-paced classes give trainees a collection of course material, often pre-recorded video lectures, and allow them to review and practice those materials when it is most convenient for them. The individualized pacing makes these classes ideal for students who want to spread their Acrobat training over a few days when it is most convenient. These courses are also a helpful way to accelerate your Acrobat training since students can purchase an on-demand course and avoid waiting for a live training seminar to be scheduled in a student’s window of availability.

Similarly, students who want to gain basic Adobe Acrobat skills quickly may want to take advantage of free training resources. Acrobat is an accessible enough program for trainees who want to learn basic but essential functions with little assistance. While more complex tasks, particularly those undertaken by professional designers or office professionals, require more training, students can learn basic PDF functions quickly. Students interested in these training options may explore the videos available on Noble Desktop’s Creative Cloud playlist on their official YouTube channel or Noble’s Learn Acrobat hub, a carefully curated collection of free tutorials, articles, and resources.

Read the complete guide on how to learn Adobe Acrobat.

Free Introductory Adobe Acrobat Course Online 

Students who want to learn the basic features of Adobe Acrobat but cannot enroll in a full training seminar may consider taking advantage of free training programs. These training programs are excellent for students who feel they need to get a basic grasp of working with PDF applications but aren’t sure they need to learn the more advanced elements of the program. These courses tend to be cursory overviews of the features and functions of programs like Acrobat; for many professionals, that is all they will need.

Noble Desktop offers several free Adobe courses, including an Introduction to Adobe Creative Cloud video seminar. In this class, students will learn the basics of Adobe Acrobat and various programs that collectively make up the Adobe Creative Cloud. This course is designed with prospective designers in mind. However, its overview of the functionalities of Acrobat will assist students who otherwise aren’t interested in learning tools like Photoshop. This course eases trainees into more professional training programs, so it is also a worthwhile resource for students who intend to learn Acrobat to complement other Adobe Creative Cloud skills.

Students may also explore more options for free Adobe Acrobat courses through service providers such as Udemy or Coursera. These training courses will vary from broad overviews of the Adobe catalog to narrow video tutorials covering the basics of Acrobat as a standalone program. Learners may also consult the free tutorial options available directly from Adobe.

Read about more free Adobe Acrobat videos and online tutorials.

Level of Difficulty, Prerequisites, & Cost 

Adobe Acrobat is an incredibly accessible tool; most users can learn the program's essential functions in only a few hours of training. While more advanced functions, particularly those intended to complement other Adobe skills, will require more training, becoming proficient in the program for day-to-day use is one of the more accessible professional skills a student can acquire.

As an entry-level program, Adobe Acrobat has no formal prerequisites for learning the essential functions save for proficiently navigating a desktop computer. Adobe Acrobat training is accessible to almost everyone. It is also an excellent place to start learning the basic skills surrounding documenting, archiving and managing large amounts of essential files and documents.

Adobe offers three different versions of Acrobat to users. Acrobat Reader is a free version that strips out most of the program's advanced features and serves as an essential PDF reading, creating, documenting, and annotating application. For most users, this will be the version of the program that is most frequently utilized. At the mid-tier level, Adobe offers Acrobat Standard to Windows users, including more creation and editing tools for about twelve dollars a month. Adobe also offers Acrobat Pro, a paid service that allows users to import, export, and convert PDF files to other formats. It also allows users to manipulate and edit PDFs and prepare them for publication or Cloud storage and distribution. Acrobat Pro is a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, which moved to a subscription model in 2013. Users can purchase a license for Acrobat Pro for about twenty dollars a month or a license to the entire Creative Cloud for approximately fifty-five dollars a month.

Read about how difficult it is to learn Adobe Acrobat.

How Does Learning Adobe Acrobat Compare to Other Applications?

Students wanting to learn Adobe Acrobat may also be interested in learning other elements of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Since Acrobat is an accessible and easy-to-learn program, building on your Acrobat training with more focused creative tools may be an ideal way to jumpstart your career. Plus, Acrobat is already heavily integrated with the rest of the Creative Cloud, and students who license Acrobat are likely to also benefit from licensing other Creative Cloud applications.

The most commonly used Adobe Creative Cloud applications are design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. These applications allow users to edit and manipulate photos, create illustrated vector graphics designs, and build vibrant page layouts for print mediums and webpages. Many students learn Creative Cloud tools in conjunction with one another since they are closely linked. Many training programs will include an overview of using Acrobat since it is one of the more common ways to save and distribute completed design files. These are creative design skills, so students learning them will also need to learn theories of design and principles of composition, which can be a challenge for students unfamiliar with working on professional artistic projects.

Students may also want to learn more advanced Creative Cloud skills, such as video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro or motion graphics with Adobe After Effects. These are more complicated than Adobe Acrobat or other simplistic video editing tools; thus, their digital animation and editing tools require more training than their more basic 2D counterparts and significantly more training than something like Acrobat. However, these skills are vital parts of in-demand career fields, so anyone interested in starting a new career path will want to learn more specialized and niche skills than Adobe Acrobat (on its own).

To learn more about the skills that make up the Adobe Creative Cloud, consider exploring the course offerings available through Noble Desktop.

How to Decide the Best Way to Learn Adobe Acrobat

Students interested in learning Adobe Acrobat may be surprised at the numerous options available. Since the program is accessible and used in many different contexts, there are many different options for learning how to use it. While students’ learning needs vary, most experts agree that students should find programs based on their desired proficiency levels. Experts also recommend that potential students consider whether they need Acrobat training as part of a standalone program or a more comprehensive career-skills training education.

Students who want to learn the basic features of Adobe Acrobat to perform their specific job tasks more effectively should consider taking advantage of free online resources. Free training is beneficial for students imagining themselves primarily using the freeware version of the program. Acrobat’s more advanced features are not essential in all situations.

Students who want to learn the intricacies and advanced features of Acrobat Pro will want to enroll in a training bootcamp or advanced on-demand class. These courses, such as Noble’s Adobe Acrobat Training course, will provide students with detailed lessons and hands-on projects working with all of the essential features of the application. These courses are ideal for students who expect to use Acrobat in their professional careers regularly or want to learn Acrobat to supplement their existing career skills.

Students who want to find a new career will need significantly more than Adobe Acrobat training, which is why many career-focused training programs, like any of Noble’s certificate-granting career classes, teach Acrobat alongside other vital career skills. These classes will vary significantly in content since they each aim to teach the skills leveraged in different careers. Still, these are the best ways to open the door to new career opportunities in fields such as graphic design or data analysis.

Learn Adobe Acrobat with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Individuals hoping to learn Adobe Acrobat will have a few options available. Noble Desktop offers private and group Adobe Acrobat training in-person at Noble’s Manhattan campus and online in live digital classrooms. These courses allow students to learn advanced Acrobat skills with the assistance of live instructors. Enrollees will work with hands-on examples that mirror the kinds of real-world applications for which they will employ Acrobat, and can ask questions and receive direct feedback from their instructors. Enrollees attending these courses will benefit from small class sizes, even online. Anyone who takes a course through Noble can retake that course within a calendar year, giving individuals s even more opportunities to master Adobe Acrobat.

Those wanting to learn Adobe Acrobat can enroll in Noble’s Adobe Acrobat Training course. This course is beginner-friendly and designed to get students comfortable with the key functionalities of Acrobat that they require in their day-to-day lives. This course will get new students up to speed by teaching them how to edit, merge, combine, arrange, share, and protect PDF files using Acrobat. This class is a great way to learn the ins and outs of Adobe Acrobat quickly. In this course, students will learn everything they need to know about storing, annotating, and working with PDF files. 

Another advantage to learning Adobe Acrobat is that it is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of tools and is therefore both heavily integrated with those applications and is one of the best ways to display designs on any device. Creative professionals, in particular, will want to learn Adobe Acrobat as part of their training in other Adobe Creative programs. Students learning skills like Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign will want to ensure they know how to improve their workflow efficiency using Acrobat.

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