With the new ArcGIS 9.3, you can create some fantastic spatially-enabled PDFs for use in the new Adobe Acrobat 9 family. Depending upon how you export your map documents in ArcGIS and the version of the Acrobat 9 you use, a variety of geospatial tools and data are available to the Acrobat 9 user.

 We'll explore a simple case here where we use the "Export Map" feature of ArcMap 9.3 (File > Export Map) and select the file type of "PDF".  Use the default settings of the PDF for best results in the widest range of circumstances.  This process will create a new PDF that is best viewed with Acrobat 9.  Keep in mind that ESRI has issued a patch for this feature (download here).

Using the free Adobe Acrobat 9 Reader, you'll notice a new "Geospatial Location Tool" (Tools > Analysis > Geospatial Location Tools).  Enabling this tool when viewing a PDF map will enable the display of the latitude-longitude, based on the current position of the cursor.  With the Geospatial Location Tool active, you can also right-click the map and select "Find a Location" to move your cursor to a latitude-longitude that you specify.  Note that if the spatially-enabled PDF is reviewed and saved in Acrobat 9 Professional or higher, the measurement and mark-up tools can be enabled.

With more sophisticated versions of Acrobat 9, more tools relevant to map work become available.  For example with Acrobat 9 Professional a measuring and mark-up tools are available and with Acrobat 9 Professional Extended spatially-enabled maps can be authored allowing shapefiles, GeoTiffs, and Jped 2000 files to be added to maps.  At ArcGIS 9.3, ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo are among the GIS tools that export maps to PDF.

- Tom Baker, ESRI Education Manager