Jan Leow's Blog Page

Hiding Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Toolbar Pane

With the new Windows 10 roll out this year, I've also updated my PDF reader to Adobe Acrobat Reader DC version. With this update though the interface looked more up-to-date, but why, oh, why must they move those handy buttons about? Instead it was a step backwards on productivity. What use to be just a click away like the comment tools, now take several steps to achieve the same thing. In addition, the right side tool panel is always set to open by default and there was no settings to stop it from appearing!

Removing the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC right side tool pane




Scouring around the Adobe forum, I found a hack in a posting. It was a simple hack and very effective. All you need to do is move out some files and the pesky right side tool pane will not show by default when you open a PDF file. Since most of the time you just needed the Acrobat Reader to just read PDF files and not so much anything else. Zapping those files sure ease up on the annoyances.

Here's how to go about:
1. Navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroApp\ENU"
or for those who still uses the 32 bit Windows version:
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroApp\ENU"
2. Create a sub-folder and call it "disabled" or any name you prefer
3. The suggestion was to move 3 files:
(i) AppCenter_R.aapp
(ii) Home.aapp
(iii) Viewer.aapp

After trying it out, the "Home" & "Tools" tab disappeared. So I opt for just removing the "viewer.aapp" file which was good enough to zap the right side tool pane from coming up each time you open a PDF file. So now everytime you open a PDF file, it opens in full page. Saves a step to click the arrow to minimize tool pane.

Now, if only I can find a solution for a short cut to my frequently used Adobe Reader tools.

3 comments:

Thirumaal Arumugam said...

Wow, thanks so much for posting this. Really helped me out. I was frustrated to no end with this unnecessary right side tools pane.

Brandon William said...

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Dubai_Red said...

Thank you so much for this hack. Was getting so annoying to manually close the window.