Customer Reviews

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Don't take my word for it that's a quote from the title of a recent post excoriating this irritating and increasingly bloated product on Slashdot.(1)

Be warned: Adobe has not learned its lesson, and despite the outcry that followed the release of version 6, this latest release of Acrobat continues Adobe's aggressive trend of intruding into your desktop environment, again, as in version 6 without providing an easy way to undo the damage once its done--in fact, it's now nearly impossible. Like earlier releases, this version of Acrobat adds startup macros and new toolbar buttons to your existing applications and adds menu entries to your desktop "right click" menus. Adobe argues that these are conveniences, but they are entirely unnecessary (for most of us "printing" to Adobe PDF achieves the same result, is much more convenient, and a more natural model), and clutter what for most users is either a too-crowded user interface (for those who don't have the knowledge or patience to customize it) or a carefully tuned one (for those who do). Unlike many well-behaved applications that provide obvious ways of avoiding this kind of intrusive and disruptive behavior (e.g. through a simple checkbox option in a settings dialog), Acrobat's "option" for disabling this behavior, once deeply hidden in the setup process,is now almost completely absent. To disable the "Convert to Adobe PDF" button that mysteriously appears in the Outlook mail editor, for example, one has to be sure to choose "this feature will not be available" from the "Microsoft Outlook" option under "Acrobat PDFMaker" under "Create Adobe PDF". Simply deleting the button using Outlook's toolbar customization feature will not work: it comes right back when the editor is next opened. Similar problems arise in Word, Excel, Visio, Project, and Internet Explorer. And there's simply no way to get rid of the never-used "Convert to Adobe PDF" and "Combine in Acrobat..." entries in that appear in the desktop context menus for files (even if one installs none of the Acrobat PDFMaker features).

For the technically inclined wishing to repair some of the damage that Acrobat 7 does, there are complex but largely effective step by step instructions available on the web(2), but even the authors of these are driven to despair by version 7: ("Adobe has really pushed the boat out with Acrobat 7 and managed to screw Word royally") .

In short, Acrobat will make a mess of your working environment, there's no way to completely fix it, and even the partial fix is a pain (and not well documented). (This may seem a minor issue, but if every application followed Adobe's reckless example, our working environments would start to look like strip malls, crowded with features screaming for our attention to the point where it is hard to find what we need when we need it. One of the great strengths of the personal computer desktop is that users can configure it in ways that suit their needs; no application should interfere with that.)

Experienced Acrobat users will also notice that this version continues another frustrating trend for Acrobat (and most other Adobe applications): it is yet again slower to launch than the previous version. In fact, on my 2 GHz Pentium 4, it takes longer to launch than the entire Visual Studio .NET development environment, and longer than the boot sequence for Windows XP!

There are other minor problems as well (arbitrary rearrangements of menu and tool bar items, etc.) but these two major flaws are more than bad enough. Unless you really need the latest Acrobat features, you should probably avoid this upgrade. And if the "improvements" in this release are any indication of where Adobe plans to go with future releases, it may be time to start looking elsewhere for a tool for digital document management.

Fortunately, there's no reason at all to upgrade. Version 7 offers no usefully new features, so you can (and should) avoid this one (at all costs).

[...]

That's right if you have fillable forms created in a previous version and expect to change them, your out of luck. I thought compatibility was the cornerstone of Acrobat.

Our firm does over $300 Million worth of business a year. We thought that Acrobat Professional ability to create fillable forms that could be shared, updated, and filled out by clients was a blessing. We not have dozens of worthless forms. And then there's the embarrassment when a client with Acrobat 7 can't fill out a form. THINK OF THE COST!

Adobe's site doesn't even mention the issue (although, their site search and help system is so poor that it may be their somewhere - who knows.)

At first, I thought I was doing something wrong. But, when I called support I was told that forms were not compatible. The service person then told me that she thought there might be a fix. However, without a service plan we'd have to pay to talk to Technical Support. We paid good money for this software (we buy multiple licenses) and only had this version for two days.

Considering the magnitude of this issue. I'm guessing there are other major problems with this release of Acrobat..

Adobe should fire its entire staff of software developers and the arrogant managers who let this software hit the market without providing fully functional compatibility.

The other reviewers are right -- Acrobat has gone to ridiculous extremes with their "integration" efforts, made far worse by the decision to make it effectively impossible to control the unwanted "Acrobat Everywhere" intrusion.

Fortunately, I have found an extremely easy way to remedy the problem: rename the directory where all of the integration files are installed. I'm posting the instructions here since I found these reviews after doing a Google search looking for a way to disable the integration, so hopefully others in the same predicament will find their way here.

Under C:\Program Files, open the Adobe directory, then open the Acrobat directory. You should see a folder named PDFMaker. Rename it (I chose something obvious, like disablePDFMaker.)

Viola. Upon restarting Outlook, Word, or other affected applications, the Office app won't be able to locate the DLLs and other Acrobat files, and will simply ignore the integrated components. (For the technically minded, these are COM DLLs, so I guess you could unregister them, but I was in a hurry, this works, and it's a lot easier to explain to the average Amazon user.)

It's sad, too -- PDFs are a great idea, and Acrobat itself is a powerful tool, but Adobe just seems to have lost all grip on reality when it comes to estimating the importance of Acrobat in the average user's daily routine.

At first I was excited because the load time for 7.0 is considerably faster than 6.0 (Professional version). But once I opened Office, what used to be an inconvenience now became a time-consuming and impossible morass: while the previous versions allowed you to remove its "convenient" toolbar (that always ate up its own row on the top, grrr!) and disable its macros, now in 7.0 these eye sores never go away since they are not normal add-in templates and worse, the Word add-in forbids you from making ANY customizations to Word. That means no customized styles, no toolbar changes, no keyboard shortcuts--all your changes get wiped out by their convenient add-in every time you exit from Word, unless you look up some obscure fix for this problem whereby you can only save your customizations if you press SHIFT + SAVE ALL in the file menu. If youre asking, what?, then that's precisely it. What the frig. I managed to remove their toolbar from Word but to disable the annoying drop-down folders (they take up too much space), I had to resort to googling the problem to find a registry-edit fix. There is really no happy compromise.
If you keep their shamelessly untested software release, then your entire screen gets cluttered and you cannot customize Word to your liking, not to mention some of their drop-down menus are just downright buggy and have crashed Word for me several times.
If you tweak the registry to disable its features, then your PDF created from Word won't be as optimal as it could be. (for one, hyperlinking heading styles do not get converted to hyperlinks unless you use their macro as far as I can tell. I like to use hyperlinking Table of Contents in my Word files so this is important to me). the only solution i have figured out is to create two registry strings, one which I click on to disable their stuff for normal use, and another that enables it again for when i need to make PDF from Word. What a hassle.
Right now I am trying to figure out how to get rid of annoying toolbar they added in Outlook.

Do not buy this product unless/until they release a fix or upgrade that addresses these issues.

I had up no now been an extremely satisfied user of Acrobat 5.0. With added features and new bells and whistles, I was just as enthusiastic about purchasing Acrobat 7.0 Pro. End of exhiliaration. From the day that I have purchased the software, I have tried everything in my power to get the "Convert Web Page to PDF" function to work (running XP SP1, IE6 SP1). User-to-User forums, local tech support, googled the web over, install uninstall reinstall the software at least 10 times. The strange thing is that I tested a version of AAP6 on my system and it worked no problem! With AAP7, i have become all too familiar with the "faulting ntdll.dll" error message with repeatedly crashes Acrobat without even a hint of guilt or compassion. Speaking of compassion... Adobe voice support was brief and to the point: "provide credit card info before proceeding with this call and receiving support for your issue".

I am grieving the simplicity of 5.0... in desperate yearning of a patch or update for 7.0 tailored to XP SP1 user needs.

I am furious. I have just upgraded from Adobe CS to Adobe CS2 which gives me Adobe Professional V7 (replaces my prior Adobe Professional V6) and now I can no longer print to ADOBE PDF from my Microsoft Word and the Adobe Professional V7 would not install the PDF Converteror PDF Printer.

I get Warning 20225 ADOBE PDF Converter error when I installed V7 from the CS2 diskettes.

I've searched the error message and it appears that is a known problem and it also appears there is no real resolution to the problem.

So, I decided to reinstall Adobe Professional V6 (and have both V6 and V7 installed and use V6 when converting word documents to my ADOBE PDF printer which is what I used before) and it will not allow me to re-install V6 saying I have an upgraded version already installed.

I suppose I could uninstall Adobe Professional V7 now and then re-install V6 (using it instead), but not sure if that would cause me a problem with other products in the CS2 Bundle (which may expect Adobe Profession V7 to be installed).

This is bizzare! Why in the world would Adobe put out a supposedly advanced product with more features and eliminate one of the highly used ones - saving a Microsoft Word document to Adobe PDF Printer???

Suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

I bought the upgrade to Acrobat Professional 7+ to replace my 6.0 Professional. All I got was "program not responding" messages when I tried to execute simple functions like scanning documents or opening documents to read, edit. I spend some time with an Adobe technician (nice people) who helped trouble shoot the installation. This required that I (on my own) start closing open programs one by one and rebooting. Finally Acrobat Prof. 7.+ worked....for a while. A installed a simple program, Tunebite's upgrade. Adobe 7+ Professional started freezing again. I gave up and uninstalled it and reinstalled crobat 6.0 professional, which is working fine as it always did. I don't have hours and patience to work Acrobat's Professional 7+ bugs.
I can't send the software back, so I will take my losses and wait for another update or for version 8, hoping that this one will work. If you have any comments you may contact me at:
[...]

Adobe continues to provide the worst, most inaccessible, and most annoying customer "service" of any major software company. After spending a half-day wading through levels of approval and ignorance, I am left with no answers to what should be a simple question about this new release of Acrobat. Adobe's product documentation is shallow, difficult to navigate, and generally fails to cover even basic features. How can they get it so wrong, for so long? I dearly wish a customer-oriented company would offer them some competition, so I wouldn't feel obliged to put up with their frequent upgrades and lousy service.

I paid full retail price for Acrobat 7.0 based on my assumtion about Adobe's reputation. What a huge mistake! Acrobat 7 will take over your machine and spread its tentacles into nearly all of your applications. The arrogance of Adobe is truly amazing. I couldn't make it work with Netscape, but I also couldn't remove it and use Reader 6.0 either. It seems they know best how you want to use your computer, and they enforce their methods upon you. Good luck if you have any problems or questions: the technical support people wanted $40.00 to answer a simple question, and this was immediately after I purchased and registered the product. I finally had to uninstall Acrobat completely from my machine. I've just wasted $450.00.

Steer clear of Version 7!

This software is buggy. Check Adobe.com forums for numerous reports of "drawing errors" when opening some pdfs. A font incompatibility issue it seems. Older version (vers 5.0) works just fine. Adobe are you listening??