How to Create an Animated PDF

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Embed Flash SWF files and 3D image files to create animated PDFs.

Acrobat's built-in options for creating animation in PDFs are quite limited. Acrobat Pro can only create animated page transitions, such as "Wipe" and "Fade," similar to slide transitions in PowerPoint. However, you can use the program's "Flash" and "3D" tools to embed animated files in your PDFs to create truly animated PDFs.

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Creating Page Transitions in PDFs

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Step 1

Open a multi-page PDF in Acrobat Pro.

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Step 2

Click "Advanced" on the menu bar, choose "Document Processing" and select "Page Transitions" from the Document Processing Fly-out. This opens the Set Transitions dialog box.

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Step 3

Click the "Transition" drop-down to choose a transition style. Click the "Direction" drop-down to choose a transition direction—a Wipe transition, for example, can wipe up, down, left, right or from one of the four corners of the page. If you want your pages to flip automatically, select the "Auto Flip" check box and choose a duration (in seconds) from the "After" drop-down. To apply the transition to all of the pages in the PDF, select "All pages in document" in the Page Range section of the dialog box. To set the transition to specific pages, select the "Pages range" radio button, and then set the page range in the "From" and "To" fields. (You can set different transitions on different pages using the Page Range option.)

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Step 4

Click "OK." To test the transitions, click "View" on the menu bar and choose "Full Screen Mode."

Embedding Animated 3D Images and Flash SWF Files

Step 1

Open the PDF in which you want to embed an animated file. Go to the page where you want the animation to play.

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Step 2

Click "Tools" on the menu bar and choose "Multimedia." From the Multimedia fly-out menu, choose the type of animation you want to embed. Choose "3D Tool" for a 3D (U3D) file, or choose "Flash Tool" for a Flash movie (SWF) file. (These two tools work basically the same.) Draw a container on the page where you want the animation to display. This opens the Insert Flash or Insert 3D dialog box, depending on which tool you choose.

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Step 3

Click the "Browse" button and navigate to the file you want to embed, or type the Internet URL for the file in the "File" field.

Step 4

Click "OK" to embed the file. Move the embedded animation, if necessary, to the desired location on the page with your mouse cursor or with the Up, Down, Left and Right arrow keys on your keyboard.

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Step 5

Test the SWF animation by clicking the "Play" button located in the left corner of the movie. Test the 3D animation by clicking the "Play" button located on the control strip above the 3D image.

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