Acrobat has become an indispensable tool for creating and distributing digital documents, but users have griped about its sometimes sluggish speed. Well, Adobe Acrobat 7.0 (which runs only under Windows 2000 SP2, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003) is finally as fast as it ought to be—and its startling increase in speed in loading and displaying PDF files is only one of many reasons to upgrade to the latest version.

For starters, Acrobat 7's interface is easier to navigate than ever before. Outlook message folders can be archived as hyperlinked PDF files, you can select part or all of a Web page in Internet Explorer and save it as a PDF file with two clicks, and scanning to PDF is now a one-button operation. The Pro version now includes an XML-based forms designer. Even the free Adobe Reader 7.0 gets a substantial speed boost and new features. Chief among them: Reader 7 users can annotate documents created in Acrobat 7 Pro, a luxury heretofore reserved only for those who bought a full version of Acrobat. This makes it possible for businesses to collaborate on documents with clients, without requiring those clients to buy into the Acrobat system.

The only thing slow about Acrobat 7 is its installation program. But once installed, the program launches at warp speed and eases navigation with a "New Window" feature that lets you view two or more places in the same document at the same time. Searches can now be performed either in the full-featured Search PDF sidebar (also used for searching multiple files that have been indexed with the Catalog feature) or in a new floating toolbar (opened by pressing Ctrl-F) that searches the current document only. Adobe doesn't explicitly claim any improvements in on-screen display, but we noticed clearer and sharper font rendering in many existing PDF files.

The new PDF viewer and manager, called the Organizer, conveniently lets you scroll quickly through previews of all PDF files that you've viewed over the past year. It also lets you build "collections," which are links to multiple PDF files anywhere on your hard drive or network. Files can be opened, printed, combined, or e-mailed directly from the Organizer, though there's no one-step way to e-mail an entire collection without combining the separate files into one PDF. Also welcome is a new Security Policies dialog that lets you specify a complex set of password protections (for reading, printing, and so on) that can be applied to a file in a single step.

Acrobat 7 comes in a $299 Standard version suitable for most individual and small-business users, and a $449 Professional version mostly for corporate use. Both versions install toolbars for one-button PDF creation in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, complete with thumbnail views of each page and active hyperlinks. Both versions let you attach the original document to the PDF file created for it.

The Pro version adds similar features to Microsoft Visio and Project and AutoCAD, and you can even put comments into PDF files created from AutoCAD. And as we mentioned, the Pro version lets you e-mail PDF files for review; recipients can then comment on the resulting PDF files using Reader 7.0. When the documents are returned to the original sender, the comments can be combined and used for final editing. With one of our test documents, we experienced a glitch where a mailed PDF generated baffling error messages when opened in Reader; and, when opened in OS X Mail on a Macintosh, it was saved as two separate PDF files, one broken, one working. You may want to experiment with a trial run before making regular use of this system.

Pro Bonus: LiveCycle Designer

The Pro version also includes Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7 (previously sold separately) for creating editable Acrobat forms that can collect user input in XML, today's lingua franca for sharing data. and geared toward expert users. The module gets new polish and usability in this release, and Designer does a fine job of getting you started by generating XML-enabled forms using a variety of sources.

A capable wizard lets you base your design on about two dozen templates for common business documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, and timesheets. You can also generate forms from databases and Web services (via WSDL files), or just import existing PDF files directly to get started. Completed form data can now be e-mailed as XML to a central mailbox or even processed electronically via SOAP-based Web services. Though it's not as slick as the main Acrobat tool, Designer ranks favorably with its main competitor, Microsoft InfoPath 2003, for overall effectiveness in building forms.

Designer offers a handy visual editor for building forms, with about 20 control types, including static text, images, and bar codes, as well as a variety of editable controls for accepting user input and converting it into XML. Beyond dragging and dropping, you can change properties of each control in a separate window. This style of design should be familiar to anyone who is comfortable with designing HTML forms with tools like Macromedia's Dreamweaver.

Controls can be "masked" to accept only certain kinds of data, like phone numbers. For simple calculations or more advanced validation rules, you can attach script code using JavaScript or Adobe's proprietary FormCalc language. We used this feature to simulate several calculated fields on a sample invoice with ease.

Over the years, Acrobat has excelled at creating exact electronic replicas of paper-based forms. The new Designer also allows you to create dynamic items in forms, such as line details on an invoice that expand or shrink according to how many items you actually need. (This feature mimics the approach favored by InfoPath, though it's entirely optional here.) As you design your form, you can view its XML (though we missed syntax highlighting) and see what it looks like in PDF preview mode.

After publishing a form, end users enter data using Reader 7 or Acrobat (the version of Acrobat needed depends on the features of the form). By clicking on the Submit button, XML data is sent to a designated mailbox. In testing, we used this feature successfully to simulate a completed purchase order, an invoice, and a customer survey. (For SOAP-based Web services, it's a cinch to call up a Web service with the user's XML data using just a line or two of script code.) Once these XML attachments are collected, Designer lets administrators export them quickly as CSV text files. Of course, for getting rid of all human intervention, organizations will need to invest in systems like Adobe's separately available enterprise-level server tools that can consume this XML automatically.

If all you need is the ability to create PDF files with hyperlinks and bookmarks, you can use programs such as Jaws PDF Creator ($79 direct, www.jawspdf.com) or FinePrint's pdfFactory Pro, with the ability to combine multiple PDF files ($99 direct, www.fineprint.com). But Acrobat remains the only corporate-level software for managing PDF files, and version 7.0 finally brings the speed, convenience, and flexibility that the PDF format deserves.