Can PDFs made with Acrobat 6 be opened by Reader 7?

[Robin_Je...@adobeforums.com]

And can PDFs made with Acrobat 7 be opened by Reader 6? What are the compatibility issues?

[Noah...@adobeforums.com]

PDF files can generally be opened in different version viewers. Problems/exceptions arise when features are incorporated in a PDF that were not part of the previous version, so the viewer doesn't have instructions to render them as you might have expected.

Separately, version 5 and later will pop-up with a warning mesaage when a file is opened that is of a file format version later than the viewer. Note: PDF versions are 1.0 through 1.6; Acrobat/viewer versions are 1 through 7. A 1.6 file will trigger the warning in Reader 6.

Finally, Acrobat has settings to determine the file version at creation, and further editing can change the file version. In Acrobat 7, you can make a file PDF 1.5, and Reader 6 has no trouble. Open the file in Acrobat 7, make some changes, save it, and now it may be version 1.6 which Reader 6 will warn you about when opening.

Noah Katz