I do a lot of technical reading and studying through PDF e-books. The problem is that, most of the time, the book doesn’t contain an index (a.k.a. Bookmarks in Adobe Reader) with direct links to chapters so you can easily browse to your favorite destination. I usually had to do a search for, say, “Chapter 5″ till I find it in the text! That’s why I love CHM based ebooks over PDF, but that’s another story.

But the real hassle is that whenever I close that specific book and re-open it later, I have to go through the same process again to pick up from where I’ve left. I sometimes try to remember the pdf page number I was last at, but in vain.

I said “why don’t Adobe Reader remember that for me!? there must be a way, right?” Well, luckily there is. It’s a hidden gem that is unfortunately disabled by default .

First open Preferences from the Edit menu…

Then make sure that you select “Restore last view settings when reopening documents“

That’s it.. Now Acrobat Reader will store the last page (along with the zoom and pan settings) of each PDF file you open so that it’s restored again once you open it in the future. How cool is that!?

Btw, I have more tips for Acrobat Reader that I will share in future blog posts inshallah…so stay tuned.

Now go read some more PDFs, with a smile on your face, remembering me

http://korayem.net/post/2007/12/Adobe-Reader-Tip-Open-a-PDFs-Last-Viewed-Page.aspx