Participant

Question

Reader XI: Removing Tools|Sign|Comment from Menu and Toolbar

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
January 14, 2013
10 replies
110347 views

Has anyone been able to accomplish this? This is a rather annoying 'feature' of Reader XI

Acrobat SDK and JavaScript

This topic has been closed for replies.

G

grumppygeezer

Participating Frequently

I spent days and finally found this can't find the forum but hope this helps some ine searching to turn this off in XI. BTW Adobe your ADM templates do not work had to use registry preferences.

Enter reg key :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\Workflows]

"bEnableShareFile"=dword:00000000

B

barbarag41429168

Participating Frequently

To stop the Tools from automatically opening every time you open a PDF, this solution worked for me on both my desktop PC and laptop. This is the solution:

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\Services

Delete these 2 files: DEXShare.spi and DEXEchoSign.spi

Yes, you will still see the word "TOOLS" at the top but at least your PDFs will open in full screen and you won't have to click "Tools" to hide that stupid sidebar every time you open a PDF.

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

OR you can stop trying to hack the software…

And just upgrade to the new Acrobat DC which no longer has this problem

johnt60538392

Participant

‌OR...you could stop being a smug admin who post smart a** comments!

The point of this forum qustion is to remove a box, on the screen, that takes up 1/3 of a user's monitor. If the document was created in your software and sent to someone else, often for the purpose of it NOT being edited - only read. Then why would you expect someone to have to purchase a software to make this happen? You have never done this in the past, one could always read the file sent by someone. And since it was created by someone who had purchased your software it made the correspondence and the actual an advertisement - the reader receives, likes how it was created, protected and sent and they decide they need to upgrade. But no....now an annoying box pops up trolling the reader to click on it, which then brings them to a page for purchasing your product. So now your box has distractsd my client from the document I sent them, and they have to close windows and go back to where they started, open the page back up and be distracted by the annoying box - or spend 5 mins trying to figure out what it is called and how to close it. So you have ruined a simple transfer of a document to a client and frustrated them in the process - which they now associated with my company.

Why can't you even put an "x" in the corner to allow someone to close the box? Why do you have to make it so difficult to accomplish a simple function?

And be smug about it? So much so you say opening a pdf on a Mac corrupts the file?! Are you kidding me? More corrupt then your advertising box that MUST open if you don't pay up - even to read a file? This is probably exatly why Apple dumped Adobe Flash!

Your "mightier then thou" attitude has convinced me to never purchase another Adobe product.

NIce job! Keep pissing people off!

B

barbarag41429168

Participating Frequently

For anyone else with this issue, the solution below DOES FIX THE ISSUE!

Go to c:\xxxxx\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\Services).

The name of the files are: DEXEchoSign.spi and DEXShare.spi

After deleting the files, restarting Adobe and clicking on the Tools, and Sign buttons, they dissapeared. Next time I started Adobe they were totally gone.

F

fukhu2002

Participant

No, it only looks like that works. I've found that if you turn off the Tools, Comments and other side bars for a document, the next time you open that document they will be gone because it remembers the setting *FOR* *THAT* *DOCUMENT*. The next document you open, the bars will be right back again. Also, the next time you upgrade, the problem will return until Adobe does a true fix.

Of course, none of this resolves the other problems with the software - searching doesn't work on all documents (it fails on documents that worked in previous versions), the software crashes at least once a day, and navigation tools come and go... and once you choose something like the snapshot tool you can't unchoose it without exiting the software and starting it again.

The software SUCKS.

B

barbarag41429168

Participating Frequently

If you delete those 2 files in the program files\xxx\xxx folder that was

explained in the message it DOES work. It worked for the guy who

originally posted the solution and it worked for me.

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 8:18 PM, fukhu2002@yahoo.com <

adam3133

Participant

I would like to remove this functionality because our users complain that it causes Reader to freeze for a moment when opening a PDF, possibly because of Reader authenticating with the web proxy appliance as it talks to Adobe's web servers.

Unfortunately the workaround posted by @Angry_Users no longer works in version 11.0.10 as the services folder does not exist anymore.

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

You can use the Acrobat/Reader Customization Wizard to do this in an enterprise installation.

B

ben_hunter32

Participant

I came here looking for a simple answer to how to turn the side bar off and I am just blown away that this is so difficult to answer. I got all the way to the end of this thread and there is still no answer in sight. Why do Adobe insist on making such an intrusive feature so hard to disable? The reason I wish to remove this is it is severely limiting my productivity. Every time I open a small document, I have to wait, up to a full minute while the bar on the side loads/accesses servers, or whatever it's doing. It gets me so frustrated, and I have no use for this bar, never used this bar in my life. It also crowds the interface. The entire application is frozen while I wait for this side panel to load. If I close it and open it again, or open a different document, I have to wait all over again. This happens on every computer I have used Adobe Reader on. It is a problem at my work and at my home and others complain of the same problem. I thought this surely would have been addressed since the first time this became a problem at least a year ago. Why do you not have a simple check-box option to turn it off? WHY? This blows my mind it truly does. And add to that the staff here seem borderline rude when their customers are asking for help on this very simple matter.

V

Vadim Rapp

Participating Frequently

Guys, when you ask Adobe to be consistent and to allow easy removing of these items in the same way as toolbar items... You seem to overlook simple fact that "Tools" is in fact spam which is advertising Adobe's paid services, so obviously it's seen as revenue center. Gotta love sincere amusement of Adobe representative who probably really believes that this spam has value.

To Adobe rep: the users are never going to use these features simply because they don't expect this functionality from Adobe Reader. Adobe is not alone in this - many large software vendors make an effort to make their product the center of customer's universe, so they stuff it with all kinds of "value-added" junk. That's how Windows Media Player becomes a monster where the modest objective of playing video file is hard to find in the pile of libraries, catalogs, online stores and everything else. Makers of Winamp follow the suit by spending time of their developers on "library". You want to download driver for your printer, and this is 200MB "suite" with 20 constantly running applications that among other things check health of your computer and of course deliver oh so valuable "offers". It's not an overstatement to say that all these components are in fact spam and viruses - they are unsolicited software that finds its way onto user's computer without his consent, and it pursues commercial goal, so it fits the definition 100%. Ironically, the users are so concerned about "protecting" their computers from viruses that they buy commercial antivirus, while their system tray is already occupied by 50 "legitimate" "value-added" titles that bring their system to its knees. If those are not viruses, then what is. So, guess what, "Tools" in Reader is pretty much the same stuff, designed and created by the same spamming hands.

Your company would do so much better if you focused the efforts of your developers on the functionality your users really want - which is very easy to find on these very forums (and it's not anything even remotely close to the "Tools") - rather than listened to your "marketing team" , aka your own professionals spammers, who have no computing culture, so they recommend all this junk and convince your management that "it will sell". Did your company ever look at the sales generated by these features? compared them to the cost of their development?

Adobe Reader is very good product, and users like it - however they like it for very specific narrow purpose, and the fact that they like it does not mean that they are going to use it for other purposes - same as however you like your own car, you probably aren't thinking about using it for cooking your dinner. Would you appreciate if your car acquired a microwave occupying 1/3 of your dashboard? that's about how the users feel about your Tools.

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

@Vadim – while you may find these “Tools” to not be useful, the fact is that MANY users out there have chosen to purchase that functionality.

A

Anonymous

And for those who do want (and pay) for these functionalities, they should be able to see, use, and also hide this panel so that it is out of the way when not in use. Likewise, those who do not want these functionalities, albeit non-paying customers, should also be able to hide them.

hypercide-Jdk48s

Participant

SimpleUser's trick works. But instead of deleting the files, I added org as an extension, in case I ever need the pane (1/10 of all uses of this software).

I agree with posters asking for a Reader lite--the freeware has become bloatware. Glad I found this fix.

R

RusticRanger2

Participating Frequently

I see the question has been asked - why would we want to remove these buttons - especially "Comment".

The simple answer is that with XFA dynamic forms you cannot have commenting, so it is completely misleading to users. That is why I would like to remove, at very least, commenting, or for Adobe to make Reader detect the format and remove Comment if the form is a dynamic XFA.

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

Hide and showing elements in a UI is not a good idea as it confuses users why something is there sometimes and not others. Having the elements dim/disable is considerd the proper and correct UI model.

T

TMB333

Participant

That comment would make more sense if that were true for ALL toolbar items, which of course it isn't.

Why is it not considered 'confusing' to users to hide/show toolbar items at their discretion, yet it is considered to be 'confusing' to users to hide/show the TOOL/SIGN/COMMENT buttons?

I don't understand Adobe's logic in not just allowing those buttons to be individually hidden like every other button on the toolbar?

J

JoeDaddyZZZ

Participant

http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2011/03/customizing-toolbars-in-acrobat-x-2/

Simple hide toolbar switch described in above link. Mostly F8 will toggle the bars.

JoeDaddyZZZ

hasanf96278326

Participant

Yeh, F8 works perfectly. Press F8 two three times.

A

Anonymous

That's very easy!

Turn off Acrobat Reader, then go to your Acrobat Reader installation folder and delete two files from Reader/Services there.

I have actually forgotten the file names, but you don't need to delete "Services.cfg".

Restart Reader, and the annoying buttons are gone forever!

lrosenth, some people use Acrobat Reader as just a reader, no offence!

S

SimpleUser4738

Participant

@Angry_Users. Thanks a lot. Your solution was very helpful. It took a while for me to figure out the location (C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\Services).

The name of the files are: DEXEchoSign.spi and DEXShare.spi

After deleting the files, restarting Adobe and clicking on the Tools, and Sign buttons, they dissapeared. Next time I started Adobe they were totally gone.

However the Comment button does not go away. This is still much better than before. Adobe is a little more user friendly now.

@Irosenth - Just think how ANNOYING in would be if you web browser did not allow you to hide the history, and favourite bars. Are they helpful, yes. Do you need them every second, no.

Similarly for Reader - preferance for Screen real estate is given to Tools, sign, comment, rather than selection tool, hand tool, and zoom buttons which become hidden in portrat mode or when screen is minimized/halved. How often do I uses the selection tool buttons/ and tool and other buttons - 50 times in an hour. How ofter do I use Tools, sign, comment - Never.

try67

Community Expert

So just click their names and they'll be gone (the panels, that is, not the buttons)...

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

No there is not. It's a core part of the UI, just like the menu bar, tool bar, etc.

Why would you want to remove them?

P

packer_country_usaAuthor

Participant

Because I do not want my users to be redirected out to the Internet via the PDF...

In the Tools, they may think that they can convert a PDF, but will be prompted for an paid Adobe account...

Same with emailing a PDF over the Internet with a paid Adobe EchoSign account...

Comments are fine... I believe in version X this was able to be removed....

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

We have an Enterprise customization solution (<http://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/index.html>) that supports some level of customization for deployed copied of Reader. If that's helpful, great!

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