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Absolutely agree with Mike's statement - use Acrobat. It's the best way to manage this process. And there is no excuse for them to NOT have Acrobat Reader X - it's FREE. Go to management and make sure you have their buy-in (and the I.T. dept).
To be more specific on what Mike wrote, publish the files as a SHARED review. Each reviewer can access the file and make their own and respond to other people's comments. They can attach files. Then they just click the little yellow PUBLISH COMMENTS button in the upper right and they're done. They can come back at any time and make more comments.
NOTE: make sure you go over this with them and EMPHASIZE that they need to click that PUBLISH COMMENTS button... they're engineers, after all, and can be a bit thick about certain things. I've showed them how to do it, each time I send out the review I remind them exactly how to do it, and still there's one engineer now and then who fails to follow that simple step. (I've got one who refuses to upgrade from Acrobat 6 because he just doesn't want to, and nobody will make him, so he can't participate in the shared reviews.)
Schedule a lunch-and-learn with the engineers - get a manager to buy pizza, etc. - and show them how the shared review works. Then there's no excuse for them not to use it going forward.
-Carla
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+cmartinek=zebra -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+cmartinek=zebra -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Mike McCallister
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 3:31 PM
To: Cat Salm; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Creating a template with locked
Cat,
I'm not sure what you mean by (2):
2) None of them have Acrobat, so if I create it as an editable pdf they won't be able to save
This may depend on your version of Acrobat. If you have Acrobat Pro 9+ (this may go back to v8, but I'm not as sure about that), you can go to "Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader" in the Comments menu. Save the doc to a network drive that everyone has access to. Your folks can then add comments, bicker amongst themselves as much as they want (and have it all present in the doc so you can track resolution of the fights)--and I saw no issues with saving when I tested this in Reader X just now. 8-)
Might be well worth an upgrade.
Hope this helps....
Mike McCallister
Senior Document Architect
PKWARE, Inc.
648 N. Plankinton Avenue
Suite 220
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Direct: 414-289-9788 x1136
www.pkware.com
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