how to delete reader files--inadequate answers

Question

We have researches this question all over the Adobe site--in Help, in FAQs, in the forums--and we have seen a number of questions and answers NEAR this topic, but none that really address it directly.

When you download PDFs to read, and you save them to your hard drive, Adobe generates a list of them--itemizing where on your hard drive they are located. Apparently a number of users are concerned about Adobe's having access to those files on the hard drive--they keep asking (or trying to ask) how to delete the files from the Adobe site.

The offered ANSWERS appear not to comprehend the question. Many "answers" focus on deleting items from the "recent"-ly downloaded list (but the question is not about the list--it's about storage); others advise that the files are not stored "in Reader" but instead at Acrobat.com (but these ignore the possibility that all you have is Reader--and NOT an Acrobat subscription, without which you cannot access anything at that site);* some "answers" describe methods for deleting the PDFs from storage on the user's own hard drive (but the question is about deleting Adobe's copy of the document, not the user's!); still others ask questions in response to the original query and then are abandoned.

Will somebody please address the underlying concern? Why does the Adobe site appear to have saved the PDFs we have downloaded for our own use? And why does the Adobe site have a list of the locations on our hard drive where we have saved PDFs we have accessed through Reader? If users' concerns are based on a misapprehension of what these lists actually represent, please explain exactly what is stored and what is the source of the list. On the other hand, if users correctly conclude that Adobe keeps some copies of the PDFs we download and access through Reader, please tell us how we can retrieve or delete Adobe's copies.

Most important, please clarify the source of the Adobe site's references to the structure of our hard drives and to the loactions of our downloaded PDFs on our own hard drives.

Thanks.

* Why on earth would Adobe to store user files in a program the user does not subscribe to?

~graffiti · Answer

If you are referring to the "Recent files" list that shows when you open Reader, that is not the "Adobe site". That is the software keeping a "Recent list" of files opened no matter where they came from. If the files are deleted or moved out of the location they were in when they were opened last, those will still show in the list but you will not be able to open them. It's just a reference. You can remove files and keep files from showing on this list by opening Reader and going to Edit>Preferences>Documents>Open settings and setting "Documents in recently used list" to zero.

Edit: To reiterate, these are not documents that the software is "storing". They are just references to documents that have been open to allow quick access in case you want to re-open them. Keep in mind, in the normal world, there is only one user using an account per machine so it isn't an issue if they see files they have opened themselves in the past.

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