Use the Adobe Acrobat Reader

Victoria Gay

It’s 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. Dr. McDonald sends out a 13 page report for you to read with the hope that you will be able to meet and talk about the report at 8:00 Friday morning. That would be fine if you didn’t already have hours of work including paper grading, program review, and book orders to have completed before the sun sets. -

So how do you read the report? Or how do you read anything while you’re already up to your elbows in writing? It’s easy, actually, if you don’t mind listening to Donnie Digital while you complete your paperwork. Please read on.

1. You should all have Adobe Acrobat Professional—I believe mine is 6.0. (I also have 7.0, and it has the same feature).

2. Anyway, if the file Dr. McDonald sent you is a Microsoft Word document, you may save the file in My Documents and then convert it to a PDF file by either selecting Convert to PDF via the Adobe PDF pull-down menu in Word or by way of the first of three Adobe icons that appear on one of your Word toolbars. (The icons include that unmistakable Adobe symbol).

3. Once the file is in PDF format and the Adobe Reader is launched, go to View on the main Adobe toolbar.

4. From there, select Read Out Loud. You will be given the option of Read This Page Only or Read To End of Document.

5. If the file was sent in PDF to begin with, you only have to follow the Adobe steps and omit the Word steps.

6. You may also select and copy all the text in a web page, paste it into a blank Word document, then convert it to Adobe, and this feature works for that text as well. There may be an easier way, but if you do not know it, this way is certainly simple enough.

7. Unfortunately the digital voice that reads to you needs help with inflection, but if you are a true multi-tasker, he’s your guy! This feature also works well for students with visual disabilities and with audio learners. It probably works well for all sorts of things I haven’t considered, but just in case you didn’t know about it, you now do.