Participant

Answered

Adobe reader files location

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 29, 2019
11 replies
40120 views

Hello,

I am using Adobe Reader on Android. When exploring docs from the app, there are a lot of files "On This Device" downloads folder, but I can't find them via android file manager, tried storage/emulated/0/downloads, also storage/emulated/0/android/data/com.adobe.reader/files/Downloads/ still can't find that docs. These docs also include old files I already deleted. That is why I think these are cache files, but still do not want to delete them, just would like to find where they are stored. Can you help me?

Correct answer Meenakshi Negi

Hi Belimbor,

On Android, if the file appears on the list of PDFs under "On This Device", then the file is saved on a location on the device.

The applicaiton only help you to view the PDFs, it does not save it in the application.

If you cannot find the file on the device, you may use the application in order to save a copy of that file.

Open the PDF in the application and then either use share option or save it to other location.

Hope the information helps.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,

Meenakshi

D

David37863133nidu

Participant

Yes i have the same issue. Adobe should have an option to view where the folder when browsing file. This is a BIG MISS for user interface. ugh!!!!!!!! I ended up saving the file again as a copy in a folder i'm familiar with.

S_S

Community Manager

Hi @David37863133nidu,

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for writing in!

By default, Reader Mobile saves a copy of the file within the same folder where the original file is saved.

If this is not what you want, you can use the option to save a copy-> select the desired location.

Hope this helps.

-Souvik

M

MUSTAFA37757982ws8h

Participant

dddd

S_S

Community Manager

Hi @MUSTAFA37757982ws8h,

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for writing in!

From the description, we are not able to understand your question/concern related to Acrobat.

Please reply in brief for a better understanding and assistance.

-Souvik

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

This whole situation reminds me of the ancient magic show called cups and balles... or dare I say a shell game?!

Z

zhangyutong926

Participant

Root your device and access /data/data/com.adobe.reader

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

Root your device and access /data/data/com.adobe.reader

By @zhangyutong926

I shall call you... my friend! 🤝

I'm with Zhang on this. Anyone else?

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

How to Export All the PDF Files Out of Adobe Reader's "Adobe Acrobat" Private Storage

1. Start the app.

2. Select "Files" at the bottom.

3. Select "On this device".

4. Tap on the three dots (for a menu) in the top right corner.

5. Select "Select all".

6. Tap on the three dots (for a menu) in the top right corner.

7. Select "Share a copy".

8. Select an app to share the files with.

I shared the files with OneDrive and my Microsoft account. I have several terrabytes of free space here that I can use, and I therefore don't need yet another cloud storage service, be it from Adobe or another company. You can select Dropbox here if you want, or another cloud storage provider.

I'm not sure what the "Duplicate" option does (it duplicates, yes, but I don't know where to). It might be that it creates local copies of your files on the device, to some location that other apps can access as opposed to being locked into Adobe's private area... you can also try selecting a file centered app of another type, like a file manager or something and see if you can make a local copy that way, I haven't tried this.

How to Export a Single PDF File Out of Adobe Reader's "Adobe Acrobat" Private Storage

1. Select "Files" at the bottom.

2. Tap on the three dots (for a menu) next to the file name.
3. Select "Save a copy".

4. Select "On this device".

This should create a local copy of this file on the device, to a location that other apps can access. This location is the "downloads" folder on the device. You can use your file manger to view this location, or just tap on the "Open" link when it appears and it will take you there. You was able to find the file in the "Download" (not "downloads") folder of "Internal storage".

S_S

Community Manager

Hello,

So basically, when you see the application showing the device logo on the files, they are either pre-saved in some location. If not, you will need to save them locally to locate them in your downloads folder.

Acrobat Reader Mobile does not save any file internally; it just creates an image of the file for you to view correctly.

Let me know if this answers your question.

Thanks,

Souvik.

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

Hello,

So basically, when you see the application showing the device logo on the files, they are either pre-saved in some location. If not, you will need to save them locally to locate them in your downloads folder.

Acrobat Reader Mobile does not save any file internally; it just creates an image of the file for you to view correctly.

Let me know if this answers your question.

Thanks,
Souvik.

By @S. S

There is nothing "basic" about any of the stated.

"So basically, when you see the application showing the device logo on the files, they are either pre-saved in some location."

Can you offer a visual example of this? Take a screenshot and show it to us. As we all know, apps keep changing their appearance. What you stated here in July might as well have changed already by December. I no longer use Adobe Reader for Android so I cannot check this. But I see that the app has changed its name actually! That speaks in favor of my point about appearance. Not only do they change appearance, they also change their name. It's now called "Adobe Acrobat Reader: Edit PDF". For some reason... it has received the epithet "Edit PDF", but I bet you still can't actually "edit" a PDF file unless you pay a premium for that and get one of those Adobe Acrobat subscriptions!

What do you even mean by "device logo on the files"? What logo? Adobe logo? PDF logo? On what files?

What do you mean by "pre-saved"? Why do you say "in some location"? What location is that? Educate us please. You don't "pre-save" something to "some location" and pretend like you don't know exactly where that is (it's within the app folder!).

"If not, you will need to save them locally to locate them in your downloads folder."

You mean if not "pre-saved"? So if the file is "pre-saved" by the app (!) it will have a "device logo" and it will be saved to "some location" (supposedly unknown location). If the file is "saved locally" by me (!), it will be located in the Downloads folder. Both operations imply saving "locally". Saving locally is just a fancy jargon word for "save here", on the device that's being used to perform the operation, rathar than to some network connected device.

But by the very definition, if it's "pre-saved", then as a user, I don't have a choice! Do I? Because Adobe thinks it knows better.

This "we know better" behavior is not unique for Adobe. Many software companies think they know better than users that use their softare, as if they can read the user's mind or something. It's often portrayed as something beneficial to the user. It "saves you time", it "makes your life easier", it "makes the app x times faster", and whatnot. But what is really at play here is taking away controls from the user and putting it in the hands of the company, and in general, just making people more stupid. Next thing you know, they want to take away our free thinking, have them do all the thinking for us, and we can merely serve to pay the bills.

This makes me wonder what you think saving a file means. What is your idea of saving a file? Have you never saved a file form the web to a computer?

Thankfully I was born before mobile phones existed, and my first mobile phone was a dumbphone, and I know what it means to save a file. This was before this app craze and "smartphones" took over the world. Adobe needs to stop doing me this favor of making my life supposedly easier by "pre-saving" my files. I will save my files wherever I want on my device. I don't need your "pre-saving" to intuitively know what I want and where I want it.

"Acrobat Reader Mobile does not save any file internally; it just creates an image of the file for you to view correctly."

Correctly? Wow! So this is the "it's not me, it's you" routine. As users, we don't know how to save files, we're too dumb to complete the task on our own. This is exactly the point I made above about companies wanting to present themselves as being better suited to do the thinking for us. We, the simple people, the consumers, the users... we don't want to think. We are no leaders. We hate thinking. We are much better off if someone else thinks for us, decides for us, and does just about everything for us. We're not capable of anything, least of all free thinking and having an opinion of our own.

Why do you say it "does not save any file internally"? What do you think "internally" means then? What do you think the app does when it "pre-saves" a file? If a file is saved "internally", it ought to mean that it's saved in such a way that it's easily accessible to the app in question: it becomes part of it's internal data store, a part of app data. This is also where you find these PDF files in Android: data/com.adobe.reader. Take note of "data" in the search path.

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

I encountered this problem many years ago now. But still, even till this day, whenever I set out to clean up my phone of old junk files I have to remind myself of just what the flip is going on with this stupid app called "Adobe Reader". Which brings me here today! HELLO! Then it all comes back to me! All the memories of bad experiences with this horrendous app comes rushing to my prefrontal cortex.

It nevere ceases to amaze me how stupid things like this can hang on for such a long time. A world war 3 will break out and the hell will freeze over before Adobe lets go of its dumb/greedy/evil/bad/wrong (take your pick) practices.

Why is Adobe doing this? Because they can! It's as simple as that. No further explanation, speculation or rationalization is necessary! If you don't like it, then you should stop using their app immediately. The remedy is just as simple as the illnes, if you're willing and ready to take a stand and have them know you're fed up with this. Where there is a will there is a way!

As a user, you too have a responsibility. Let Adobe know what you think by uninstalling their app, and encourage your friends and other people you care about to do the same. Be the change you want to see in the world, and all that. Stop supporting Adobe by using their products and services. How bad do you need it? How bad do you want it? You need bread and water to survive in the world, you don't need "Adobe Reader".

You don't have the right to complain if you choose not to do what's in your power to make a change by uninstalling Adobe Reader and finding an alternative app or workflow for PDF files.

PDF is now an open standard, so competitors are able to make compatible apps without having to pay royaltee fees to Adobe. At least breaking away from your dependency on Adobe for PDF files should be a no-brainer. It's worse if you had to do the same for Photoshop and Premiere Pro files and workloads.

Just uninstall! I have uninstalled Adobe Reader. You should do the same.

S

Samir of Bosnia

Participating Frequently

Dear readers of my post, please forgive me for not inserting extra line breaks to add separation between the paragraphs for easier reading. Apparently, since I am new here, Adobe suspects that I'm here to abuse and spam you, so they have disabled the Edit function. You can read all about it here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/using-the-community-discussions/edit-forum-post-still-not-fixed/m-p/11504211#M46193

This is a paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

This is also a paragraph but with one extra line break above it. Notice how much easier it is to read. Sadly I cannot edit this in to my post above because I am not allowed to. So you will have to live with it. Surely, it's much easier to live with something as unimportant as this, than living without something as important as bread and water. But it's small things like this that put me off from participating in such web forums (a.k.a. "community").

You can tell by the link above that other members are upset by this too. But the reasoning here is the same as for the Adobe Reader app... why is Adobe doing this? Because they can. But you can choose to not participate and go elsewhere. In my experience, the best places to discuss a software product are independent web forums, and not forums that are operated by the same people that made the product. Unless it's a free and open source software, because then the rules are usually much more loose and it's easier to freely discuss any aspect of the product or the community rules.

W

WalshTX

Participant

Just wanted to give everyone a solution if I am reading the post correctly. It seems that some have residual files hanging out in the app as well as others who can't get the file location to populate. This solution pertains to those who can't retrieve the file location.

To me it seems unmportant as to where the file is stored, but rather retrieving the file is the utmost importance. For Samsung Galaxy s20 users there is a feature built into the phone called quick share. To use this feature open your Adobe app and under the file icon you should see all of your files. In the upper right hand corner hit the three menu button dots and then, select all next hit the same three menu button and select share. Here you will use the quick share option that should already be populated, if not you can scroll over and search for it. I sent the files to my new phone as they did not move over during the Samsung smart switch. I found this option to be very fast and was able to move all of the files at once opposed to sending them individually or being limited by email file size restraints. Hope this helps anyone in the future.

Additionally, the files will be saved to your internal storage under download and in the quick share folder. From here you can move them wherever you like.

H

hkhan_pdfs

Participant

Without addressing the issue of whether how the files are kept is good practice or not, the following is the easiest way I found to get all my files off my android and onto my computer when I was switching phones:

(Within the Adobe Reader app) Go to Files and then On This Device

Click on the three-dots menu at the top right and then do Select All

Use Share a Copy and an option like Bluetooth to send them all to your computer in one go.

While it took an unnecessarily long time for the transfer, I did get all 450+ files off the device without needing to do each individually.

Hope this helps someone else looking for a solution like I was.

J

jamai5

Participant

extremely helpful. It works.

N

NSN ZZ

Participating Frequently

Seems to be poor design. Adobe assumes you only read files from within the app and then delete.

Problem is that files come with many other apps (browser, email attachment, whatsapp) and deleting the email or downloaded file is not recognized by Adobe. I have 4 gigs now devoted to Adobe because of their design.