[BassettLawFirm]

I'm currently running BES for Exchange 4.0.6.12 and I'm looking to upgrade to 4.1 shortly, however I had a question about the so-called 'improved PDF support' RIM touts in the new release.

A little background first....

We currently have (1) 7100, (8) 8700's, (1) 8100 and (1) 8800. These are used by attorneys and they deal with a lot of PDF files. By far, the biggest complaint from them is the inconcsistancy in being able to open PDF. Some open, some do not.

(I'm led to believe it has a lot to do with what version Acrobat was used to create them, whether they are TIF's inside the PDF or actual editable text. Can anyone clarify exactly?)


So my questions are:

1) Is there really improved PDF support in version 4.1?
1a) If so, can you give me details on how it's improved and maybe ways it still needs to improve?
2) Will all the above devices see an improvement?



Thanks for any information. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the forums here for the past 15+ months as it has certainly helped educate me tremendously.

[Zro]

The 4.1 attachment service does have some improvements, but most of those would have already filtered down to later 4.0 service packs.

On the newer versions of handheld software, and BES, there are three methods to view PDF's on a BlackBerry....Text, Text with snapshot, snapshot. Open a pdf in acrobat reader, select all, paste into Notepad and you get to see what Text will look like (note, this is pretty much how the attachment service does it). Open the PDF in acrobat again, do an ALT+PrtScr, then paste into Paint to get how Screenshot will look. the screenshot & text view will show the screenshot image at the top, with that page's text below (combining the above two methods).

It does have a lot to do with what version of PDF specification the file was saved with, what kind of templates and forms are used in the PDF, what program wrote the PDF (in some cases, linux based PDF writers have been known to cause issues) as well as what features are enabled/disabled in the PDF. If the PDF creator has disabled the ability to select text in the PDF, then you will not be able to get the Text view for it (attachment service using a copy all/paste type method...can't copy all, you get nothing).

Hope this helps clarify some things, and hope someone else can chime in with more info on what exactly changed in 4.1 that has not yet filtered down to 4.0 service packs.

Zro

[Ekrimmer]

I can tell you this much - prior to 4.1 SP3 PDFs created from a scanner (specifically an HP 9100C Digital Sender) could not be viewed on the BB. Now they can. Nicely done I say.