How to Create a Watched Folder on Acrobat Distiller Video

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How to Create a Watched Folder on Acrobat Distiller

There is one more thing that Adobe Acrobat Distiller can do for you and I want to cover that here. It’s a little bit of an advanced item, but its something that the graphics people certainly use frequently. Under the settings menu, you can create what are called Watched Folders. Watched Folders allow you to feed distiller a whole set of files and then ask it to convert those files while you're not sitting at the computer. It’s kind of a batch process and it’s actually very, very handy if you need to convert a lot of say Postscript files or maybe some encapsulated Postscript files to PDF. You can have it happen behind the scenes while distiller is doing the work, you can go off and have some lunch or do whatever it is that you might want to do. So let's create a Watched Folder. I'm going to select settings Watched Folders and the first thing that I need to do is add a folder. Now you have to create the folder first, Acrobat Distiller isn't going to allow you to create a folder like some other applications can, when you're saving a file, sometimes you can go ahead and create a folder on the slide. Distiller doesn’t allow you to do that. So create the folder ahead of time and then start here. I've actually created a folder for you, it’s inside that lesson five folder of the part one folder in the project file set. So were going to use that as our folder. We’ll select add folder. And again my project files are on desktop, so I’ll navigate my way to them. In here we have a Watched Folder very cleverly labeled Watched Folder. When I click open, distiller will kind of take that folder over and I’ll show you what I mean by that in just a moment because we’re actually going to use it to produce some PDF. Before I finish though, I need to tell distiller what settings to use and if I want to I can click edit settings and start a fresh and create my own new group of settings or I'm going to hit cancel because I've already created settings and I just wanted to just load some of the settings that I've already created. So I’ll choose load settings. I can pick from among of my settings. Perhaps this folder is going to be used to produce a set of standard PDF files for using the laser printer, so I’ll just load that group of settings. This little icon indicates that this folder now has a group of job options associated with it and it’s good to go. A couple of other things that I want to set, how often does distiller check to see if there’s something in there that it can process. I’ll have it go over it 10 seconds or so. I can set that to zero or I can set that to some large number, but I’ll show you why that doesn’t matter in just a moment. And then when everything is done, I want it to move the Postscript file or whatever else I give the Watched Folder to convert the PDF into the out folder. And you’ll see what that out folder is in just a moment. Finally if I want to I can actually add some security right here and this is pretty handy. If going to produce a group of PDF files on mass and I want distiller to do it, I might want to add some security to the mix as they're being created. So I’ll click edited security. I'm going to restrict the editing and printing of the documents through the use of a permissions password. So I’ll type a password here and I don’t want it to be able to be printed and I don’t want changes to be made to the document, so we’ll leave those alone. I’ll click OK and I have to reiterate the password and this is just Acrobat making sure that I didn’t miss type in the first place because ones I secure a file, if I don’t have the password, I'm not going to be able to unsecure the file and get them and do any editing of it myself. So we’ll go ahead and confirm that and it confirms, so everything is okay. Now, we’ll select OK, and in this case again nothing is happening because all I've done is I've created a Watched Folder. So let's open that folder and I’ll open the Lesson Five folder and there we have a Watched Folder. Now the Watched Folder has been empty until I handed it to distiller. When I open it up, you’ll see that I now have an in and out and a set of job options, these were the settings that I want the folder to use. To use this folder, I'm going to open another window into the lesson files folder and I’ll move them side by side so we can see them together. So I have four files that I want to process. I'm going to select all four of them. I'm holding the shift key down and I'm simply going to drag them into the IN folder and let go. Now before anything happened I'm just going to jump back to distiller and if I watch, I’ll see the distiller will jump to life and every 10 seconds it checking in that IN folder to see if there is something to process. If found one thing to process, it’s processing it, it found the second thing, a third thing, and a fourth thing. So what it did was it found all of those files that are put in there and it processes them into PDF files. Let's go back to the Watched Folder and that’s the IN, so the in is empty because I asked it to move everything. So I’ll back up a step, now I've got the IN folder, let’s look in the OUT folder and low and behold not only are the files that I put in the IN folder, in the OUT folder, but the PDF files that distiller created for me are also in the out folder. There are basically two things that I can put in Watched Folders IN folder for processing. Those are Postscript file and EPS files, but if you have a process that allows you to create a large number of those that you don’t want to convert into PDF, the Watched Folder functionality can be a great way to batch this up. So that you don’t actually have to sit there and ask distiller to convert each one of them in turn. But what about converting a file all by itself in turn, well let's return back to distiller. And the last thing that I want to show you is that distiller itself has a file Open Menu, I can choose File, Open and in that same lesson five folder from the project files, there is a Postscript file. You can open that Postscript file which is essentially handing it to distiller, distiller will take that file and convert it to a PDF file and drop the PDF file in the same place that it got the Postscript. So we’ll go back to our lesson five folder and there is the Postscript and there is the PDF file. And the last step that you almost, always want to take when you generate a PDF file is to open that file in Acrobat, examine it, make sure that it did what you hoped it would it would do. Your fonts are embedded, the images look the way that you want them to look so that you can make sure that process was successful. Adobe Acrobat Distiller is an incredibly robust tool. In this lesson my goal was to show you how to access the various knobs that you can use to set yourself up to create the right kind of PDF for your needs. The rest of the process is really going to be up to you, you'll want to experiment with it, you'll want to share settings with others and get settings from others, so that you can learn how to produce the exact right group of settings to create the exact right type of PDF file for your needs.

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There is one more thing that Adobe Acrobat Distiller can do for you and I want to cover that here. It’s a little bit of an advanced item, but its something that the graphics people certainly use frequently.

Under the settings menu, you can create what are called Watched Folders. Watched Folders allow you to feed distiller a whole set of files and then ask it to convert those files while you're not sitting at the computer. It’s kind of a batch process and it’s actually very, very handy if you need to convert a lot of say Postscript files or maybe some encapsulated Postscript files to PDF. You can have it happen behind the scenes while distiller is doing the work, you can go off and have some lunch or do whatever it is that you might want to do.

So let's create a Watched Folder. I'm going to select settings Watched Folders and the first thing that I need to do is add a folder. Now you have to create the folder first, Acrobat Distiller isn't going to allow you to create a folder like some other applications can, when you're saving a file, sometimes you can go ahead and create a folder on the slide. Distiller doesn’t allow you to do that. So create the folder ahead of time and then start here. I've actually created a folder for you, it’s inside that lesson five folder of the part one folder in the project file set. So were going to use that as our folder. We’ll select add folder. And again my project files are on desktop, so I’ll navigate my way to them. In here we have a Watched Folder very cleverly labeled Watched Folder. When I click open, distiller will kind of take that folder over and I’ll show you what I mean by that in just a moment because we’re actually going to use it to produce some PDF.

Before I finish though, I need to tell distiller what settings to use and if I want to I can click edit settings and start a fresh and create my own new group of settings or I'm going to hit cancel because I've already created settings and I just wanted to just load some of the settings that I've already created. So I’ll choose load settings. I can pick from among of my settings. Perhaps this folder is going to be used to produce a set of standard PDF files for using the laser printer, so I’ll just load that group of settings. This little icon indicates that this folder now has a group of job options associated with it and it’s good to go.

A couple of other things that I want to set, how often does distiller check to see if there’s something in there that it can process. I’ll have it go over it 10 seconds or so. I can set that to zero or I can set that to some large number, but I’ll show you why that doesn’t matter in just a moment. And then when everything is done, I want it to move the Postscript file or whatever else I give the Watched Folder to convert the PDF into the out folder. And you’ll see what that out folder is in just a moment.

Finally if I want to I can actually add some security right here and this is pretty handy. If going to produce a group of PDF files on mass and I want distiller to do it, I might want to add some security to the mix as they're being created. So I’ll click edited security. I'm going to restrict the editing and printing of the documents through the use of a permissions password.

So I’ll type a password here and I don’t want it to be able to be printed and I don’t want changes to be made to the document, so we’ll leave those alone. I’ll click OK and I have to reiterate the password and this is just Acrobat making sure that I didn’t miss type in the first place because ones I secure a file, if I don’t have the password, I'm not going to be able to unsecure the file and get them and do any editing of it myself. So we’ll go ahead and confirm that and it confirms, so everything is okay.

Now, we’ll select OK, and in this case again nothing is happening because all I've done is I've created a Watched Folder. So let's open that folder and I’ll open the Lesson Five folder and there we have a Watched Folder. Now the Watched Folder has been empty until I handed it to distiller. When I open it up, you’ll see that I now have an in and out and a set of job options, these were the settings that I want the folder to use. To use this folder, I'm going to open another window into the lesson files folder and I’ll move them side by side so we can see them together. So I have four files that I want to process. I'm going to select all four of them. I'm holding the shift key down and I'm simply going to drag them into the IN folder and let go.

Now before anything happened I'm just going to jump back to distiller and if I watch, I’ll see the distiller will jump to life and every 10 seconds it checking in that IN folder to see if there is something to process. If found one thing to process, it’s processing it, it found the second thing, a third thing, and a fourth thing. So what it did was it found all of those files that are put in there and it processes them into PDF files. Let's go back to the Watched Folder and that’s the IN, so the in is empty because I asked it to move everything. So I’ll back up a step, now I've got the IN folder, let’s look in the OUT folder and low and behold not only are the files that I put in the IN folder, in the OUT folder, but the PDF files that distiller created for me are also in the out folder.

There are basically two things that I can put in Watched Folders IN folder for processing. Those are Postscript file and EPS files, but if you have a process that allows you to create a large number of those that you don’t want to convert into PDF, the Watched Folder functionality can be a great way to batch this up. So that you don’t actually have to sit there and ask distiller to convert each one of them in turn.

But what about converting a file all by itself in turn, well let's return back to distiller. And the last thing that I want to show you is that distiller itself has a file Open Menu, I can choose File, Open and in that same lesson five folder from the project files, there is a Postscript file. You can open that Postscript file which is essentially handing it to distiller, distiller will take that file and convert it to a PDF file and drop the PDF file in the same place that it got the Postscript.

So we’ll go back to our lesson five folder and there is the Postscript and there is the PDF file. And the last step that you almost, always want to take when you generate a PDF file is to open that file in Acrobat, examine it, make sure that it did what you hoped it would it would do. Your fonts are embedded, the images look the way that you want them to look so that you can make sure that process was successful.

Adobe Acrobat Distiller is an incredibly robust tool. In this lesson my goal was to show you how to access the various knobs that you can use to set yourself up to create the right kind of PDF for your needs. The rest of the process is really going to be up to you, you'll want to experiment with it, you'll want to share settings with others and get settings from others, so that you can learn how to produce the exact right group of settings to create the exact right type of PDF file for your needs.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services