How do I remove the right hand pane in Reader DC (LOCKED)

Thank you.

Just so you know, I moved the files into "Dumb Apps". And it still works.

Delete the whole folder "AcroApp" under C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader

Thanks for the workaround guys.

To Adobe this is the most frustrating viewer, not being able to turn off the right hand pane is really annoying. My trust in Adobe and its products has gone.

Just adding another voice...

Please fix this Adobe and thanks to those that came up with the workaround.

I wanted to deploy Reader DC with SCCM 2012 to all the clients in our Enterprise and found the right hand pane to be a real pain for my users.

I used the Acrobat Customization Wizard DC (ACWDC) to create a custom .mst file to disable all the auto updating and other online services but that right hand pane just wouldn't go away.

Finally I ended up using the previously posted solution of editing Viewer.aapp to only contain the following:

<Application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/acrobat/app/2014" title="Viewer" id="Viewer" majorVersion="1" requiresDoc="true" minorVersion="0">

</Application>

In ACWDC I then went to "Files and Folders"/"Destination Computer"/ProgramFilesFolder/Adobe/"Acrobat Reader 2015"/Reader/AcroApp/ENU and dragged the edited Viewer.aap file to that location and confirmed that I wanted to replace the already existing file.

The on the Transform menu I selected "Generate Transform" and saved the transform as "AcroRead.mst". All extra files you drag into the file structure will be saved inside the .mst file.

To install I then use:

msiexec.exe /i AcroRead.msi TRANSFORMS=AcroRead.mst /norestart /qn

This will install Reader silently and apply the transform with the edited Viewer.aapp file.

<sarcasm> Thanks Adobe for making it so easy to manage your software in an enterprise environment! </sarcasm>

THANK YOU all for the solution to thiis vexing interface problem.  I chose the file-removal approach, and it works perfectly.

And here's an additional tip that I don't think is in this thread (I picked it up while trying to find out how to turn off the pane):  Hitting Shift-F4 toggles the tool pane on and off.  I've been using this with every new document, but by eliminating the three app files I now get no pane by default -- and Shift-F4 still works when I need the tools!  As a keyboard-centric user I much prefer this to clicking on a menu.

I have to say that I actually like the new pane and the various toolboxes when I want to use tools, which unlike some here I do fairly often -- but not otherwise.  So this solution is perfect for me.

not to put too fine a point on it, it's probably up our a***es and down our... well, you get it.  can someone perhaps tease out the syntax of these xml files?  they might be useful once we know how they work.

FYI - You can easily comment out the lines in the Viewer.aapp XML file instead of deleting them in case you want to bring the tool pane back for some reason. I suppose that making a backup copy of the file is another alternative but I just simply commented out the lines and I can always remove them later if I want.

You can comment out the lines by adding <!-- before the first line that is not needed and --> after the lines that is not needed. This comments out the entire block of lines. See below.

<Application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/acrobat/app/2014" title="Viewer" id="Viewer" majorVersion="1" requiresDoc="true" minorVersion="0">

<!--

    <Layouts>

        <Layout name="Default">

            <RHP>

                <Component name="AppShortcutListView" type="Custom"/>

            </RHP>

        </Layout>

    </Layouts>

-->

</Application>

Hey Huh,

to disable the right pane, you can follow the answer from tmmcentyre https://forums.adobe.com/message/7472578#7472578 or the answer from HHugo https://forums.adobe.com/message/7544218#7544218

The problem with both workarounds is, if you click on "Home" or "Tools" on the toolbar, you can't go back to "Document."

With tmmcentyres workaround you lose some more features too.

To fix this follow HHugos workaround, but keep the last line form the file too.

So edit the "Viewer.aapp" file located in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroApp\ENU\".

Here remove line 2 till 8:

<Layouts>

    <Layout name="Default">

        <RHP>

            <Component name="AppShortcutListView" type="Custom"/>

        </RHP>

    </Layout>

</Layouts>

So the content of the file is only:

<Application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/acrobat/app/2014" title="Viewer" id="Viewer" majorVersion="1" requiresDoc="true" minorVersion="0"/>

</Application>

Now the right pane should be closed if you open a .pdf file. You can switch between "Home", "Tools" and "Document" without issues and the remaining features should work as intended also.