Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

Open a PDF

You can open a PDF from within the Acrobat application, from the desktop, or from within certain other applications.

Open a PDF in the application

 Start Acrobat and do one of the following:

  • Choose File > Open, or click the Open button  in the toolbar. In the Open dialog box, select one or more filenames, and click Open. PDF documents usually have the extension .pdf.

  • (Windows) Choose File > [a previously opened PDF].

  • (Mac OS) Choose File > Open Recent File > [a previously opened PDF].

  • From either the File > Organizer submenu or the Organizer button menu on the File toolbar, choose Collections > [collection name] > [PDF filename].

  • From the File menu or the Organizer button menu on the File toolbar, choose History > [time period] > [PDF filename].

If more than one document is open, you can switch between documents by choosing the document name from the Window menu. In Windows, the application places a button for each open document on the Windows taskbar. You can click this button to move between open documents.

Open a PDF from the desktop or within another application

 Do one of the following:

  • To open a PDF attached to an email message, open the message, either by double-clicking the PDF icon or right-clicking/Control-clicking and choosing Open.

  • To open a PDF linked to an open web page, click the PDF file link. The PDF usually opens in the web browser.

  • Double-click the PDF File icon in your file system.

    Note: In Mac OS, you may not be able to open a PDF created in Windows by double-clicking the icon. Instead, choose File > Open With > Acrobat.