How to Mark Up PDFs with Adobe Acrobat
Ever wondered how to import comments from another PDF with a single click, filter your changes to easily find your queries, or help your designer apply your changes automatically? Look no further! How to Mark Up PDFs with Adobe Acrobat is packed with ideas to save you time and make your life easier. This course provides practical guidance, demonstrating the full potential of Adobe Acrobat’s mark-up tools and giving you tips to instantly improve your working practices. We will introduce good practice principles to help you work quickly, neatly and efficiently, and enable your design team to easily interpret, manage and implement your changes.
Designed to take you from novice to power-user, the course promotes active learning, using a blended approach of step-by-step demonstrations with opportunities to practise your new skills, ask advice during the session and check your understanding with summary quizzes. After the session, you will have access to handy summary sheets of the key skills you have learned.
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Who is it for?
- Editorial staff, including co-ordinators, managers, managing editors, project editors and editorial assistants
- Freelance and in-house staff who work on PDFs
- Indexers
- Production staff, including quality controllers, quality assistants and production editors
- Proofreaders and copy-editors
- Project managers
- Translators
What will you achieve?
- A full understanding of which Adobe Acrobat Commenting tools are best to use and what to use them for
- How to decide the best method of mark-up to work quickly, neatly and efficiently
- How to customize the appearance of mark-ups
- How to manage mark-ups to improve productivity
Programme
- Mark-up principles for best practice
- Adobe Acrobat mark-up tools – what to use and how
- Customising your tools
- Easy wins for efficient working
- Managing your mark-up
What is included?
Certificate
Upon successfully completing the course you will receive a completion certificate from PTC.
Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) points
Completing this course is worth 2 non-core points towards upgrading your CIEP membership.
Delegate feedback
“The course was great. A good balance of listening then practical activities. I’ve gained lots of tips which will make things much more efficient and accurate.” Garnet Education delegate
“The course was excellent, the pace enjoyable – not too rushed or intense. Sarah is super encouraging, enthusiastic and helpful. Her teaching style was incredibly pleasant and we all felt very at ease. All of the tips and exercises were very helpful too. I have gained confidence and am now aware of the full range of tools within the system. This will help me to be more accurate and efficient in my role.” Class Professional Publishing delegate
“The course has transformed the way I work on PDFs and I am much more confident in using best practice.” Orion delegate
“The course leader was very engaging, and opened the floor up to us all, which I enjoyed. Immediate benefits include more efficient use of PDFs, e.g., learning that you can import comments, which will save a lot of time.” Headline Publishing delegate
“An excellent course. I’ve learned some great shortcuts and training information to take back to colleagues.” International Court of Justice delegate
"Thank you for the truly eye-opening course on Proofreading PDFs. It was accessible and informative and will be incredibly useful going forward. Using the comments function this way will be a game changer! I am looking forward to my next proof to try and embed those processes into my muscle memory." Michelle Griffin, freelance editor and proofreader
“I loved the course! It was interesting, and our teacher lovely and super informative. I'm already finding it so much quicker and clearer to mark up PDFs, using the method demonstrated and by following a specific proofreading order.” Little Tiger Press delegate
“Sarah was enthusiastic, personable and engaging. I loved doing the practical activities along with her. I now know how to work efficiently with PDFs." AIS delegate
“Sarah kept us focused – there were a lot of different things to do, so I wasn’t bored at any point. It was great to understand where things can go wrong. Every person who checks proofs should come to this – including less obvious ones, like marketing colleagues who often see covers.” Designer, Hodder Education
“I really appreciated that the focus was on teaching an ‘industry standard’ for digital mark-ups, as my skills are self-taught. It was the best-delivered course I’ve taken over Zoom, and well-tailored to online delivery. Thank you for a great course – I’ve learned a lot!” Reprints Editor, Hodder Education
“Sarah did a great job. The info was concise and the mini quizzes were a clever tool to help remember key points. I am much clearer about how to go about editing PDF proofs.” Freelance Editor, Writer and Designer, Word Works
About the tutor(s)
Since 1999, Sarah Sodhi has proofed, tagged, bound, corrected, edited, managed, commissioned, subbed, scheduled, estimated and produced a great deal of content – from interactive, multi-media resources to marketing leaflets, from monthly magazines to 900-page medical tomes.
Starting her career at a small medical publisher in Oxford, Sarah produced medical textbooks, journals and a bi-monthly magazine. She then moved into the public sector to work for an adult education charity, introducing formal scheduling procedures, progress-chasing systems and detailed budgets. After this, she immersed herself in the education sector, editing and managing digital and print resources for primary, secondary and adult education publishers.
Dates
Thursday, 18 September 2025
Date information for future sessions
September 2025
- Dates: 18 September
- Times: The session will run from 9.00am to 12.30pm
Course format
- Virtual classroom
- 9.00am to 12.30pm
- Two x 1.5 hour sessions plus break
A number of discounts are available
What you will need
We recommend you take this course with two screens, unless you have a large monitor. This will enable you to watch demonstrations while following on your own screen. You will need access to a computer or laptop with a camera and microphone and with either Adobe Acrobat Reader DC or Adobe Acrobat Professional installed.
To join the course, you will need to activate a Zoom account. This takes two minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.