In this 40th installment of his microlearning series, Randall F. Dean (the "Email Sanity Expert") introduces viewers to a previously unknown shortcut in Adobe Acrobat Reader’s Fill & Sign tool. He explains that the basic, free Reader includes Fill & Sign, which lets users add text to PDFs. While demonstrating a mock form, Dean shows that when a text field lands in the wrong vertical position, the up and down arrow keys (or Page Up/Page Down) can nudge the field line‑by‑line into the correct spot—something the left/right arrows cannot do. He walks through the discovery, provides a brief live example, and then wraps up by promoting his broader microlearning playlist, encouraging subscriptions, and offering free productivity PDF tip sheets via email (randy@randalldean.com) for Outlook, Google Workspace, and related tools.
Chapters
Alright, hi everybody, Randall F. Dean, Email Sanity Expert here. Hey, this is sort of exciting for me. Over the holidays, I made an announcement that I was going to build a series of 40 microlearning videos because I hit 4,000 subscribers. This is video number 40. I made it, although now I'm getting closer to 5,000 subscribers. I might have to make yet another video. But hey, if you guys keep subscribing like you're subscribing, I'll make more of these. Um, now this one's sort of fun because I'm going into something I've never covered before— Adobe Acrobat Reader— and one of my very favorite tools inside of it, the fill and sign feature. And I discovered something a little bit, um, it was an accidental discovery. So let me show you what I found. All right, so let's pop out of here. Let's go into my Adobe And I made this little, you know, bogus form, uh, just to show you how this can work. And I didn't know you could do this. Now remember, Fill and Sign is one of the tools that you can have with just Basic Reader. You don't have to pay for this. And when you click on Fill and Sign, what it's going to do is it's going to allow you to basically do, uh, add text to an existing document. Now usually when I use this, it's because Somebody wants me to fill out a form for one of the events I'm about to speak at or sign a contract. Now, interestingly, one of the things you can do is sign, but I'm not going to show you that because then you would have my signature on video. You don't want to do that. But notice this, you can come down here and you can type in like you normally would. Randy Dean, MBA, occupation. Now, here's the weird thing though. Let me show you this. I'm going to go out of order. All right, and let's take this box. Sometimes when you click using the text tool, which is the standard when you're filling in the forms, it gets in the wrong spot. See how this one isn't quite on the line, but I'm gonna fill it out anyway. Uh, the email— hey, there I am, the Email Sanity Expert. Let's put that in. Oh, but wait, it put a weird tab in there, so let's back this up and get it looking clean. This is not the tip. I'm about to show you the tip. Check this out. Once you get it in, that's in the wrong spot. What you can do is click on this, use your up or down, page up, page down arrows, the little arrows. There's my discovery. When it's not in the right spot, you can use the up and down. Now, I was trying this. The left and right arrows don't work. They see they're trying to move me around. Within the text, but the up and down arrows can allow you to change the positioning of the box. You get it just right on that line. Favorite food, uh, crab legs. Pep pizza. That's pepperoni. Hmm, uh, you know, uh, what else? I really do like Doritos. Um, so, uh, yeah, but hey, Now I'm digressing and having a little fun with you. So with that, I'm going to end the video and say thank you for your time. If you'd like to learn more about me and my normal programming, which is usually on tools like, uh, Outlook and 365 or Gmail and Google Workspace, check out my channel, subscribe, like this video if you like the video. And if you want to get my, um, series of productivity PDF tip sheets on time management, email management Outlook usage, Google Workspace and Gmail, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Send me an email, randy@randalldean.com. Put YouTube PDF in the subject line and I'll get that for you. But hey, enjoy this cool little tip, um, for your Adobe Reader. And I will tell you also, I'm going to put in the description the playlist of all 40 of these microlearning videos. I made a playlist so you can sit here and watch a whole bunch of short videos for a whole long time. Awesome! Bye everybody!
