All Tools Pane Disappears/Empty When I Select Edit PDF?

Hi ​@Mia331623608r1r,

Really appreciate the thorough breakdown — and the fact that you've already been through the full reinstall cycle with the Cleaner Tool tells me this isn't a local corruption issue. This points more toward an environmental or deployment-layer conflict with the New Acrobat UI engine.

Before diving into fixes, a couple of quick questions that'll help narrow this down:

• What's the exact Acrobat version (Help → About Adobe Acrobat)?
• How is Acrobat deployed in your environment — Creative Cloud packager, SCCM/Intune MSI, or manual install?
• Are all affected machines domain-joined, and are any of them running on VDI, Citrix, or AVD?
• Does the blank panel appear for all user profiles on a machine, or only specific ones?

That said, here are the most targeted fixes based on what you've described:

1. WebView2 Runtime — version and type matter
The New Acrobat UI renders its tool panels via Microsoft Edge WebView2. The issue isn't always an outdated WebView2 — it can also be the Fixed Version runtime (common in locked enterprise environments) conflicting with what Acrobat expects. Check which runtime type is installed via winget list Microsoft.EdgeWebView2Runtime. If it's Fixed, switching to the Evergreen runtime often resolves blank panel issues entirely.

2. Exact registry key to enforce Classic mode fleet-wide
Since Classic mode works, here's the specific registry entry to push via GPO or Intune across your fleet as a scalable interim fix:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\Features
DWORD: bToggleNewUX → set to 0

This disables New Acrobat for all users without them needing to toggle it manually.

3. Adobe ADMX Group Policy templates
Adobe publishes official ADMX templates for Acrobat DC that include policies for controlling the New Acrobat experience centrally. If you're not already using these, they're worth deploying — gives you much cleaner control than registry pushes. Available via the Adobe Enterprise Toolkit.

4. Per-user AppData cache — full path
The cache path that survives reinstalls is:
%AppData%\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\DC
Delete the JSCache and UserCache folders specifically. Also check %LocalAppData%\Adobe\Acrobat for any AcroIPCHelper or WebCache remnants.

5. Proxy / network filtering check
The New Acrobat UI fetches assets from Adobe's CDN at runtime. If your environment uses Zscaler, Netskope, or a similar SSL-inspection proxy, it can silently block these requests — causing panels to render blank with no obvious error. Test by temporarily bypassing proxy for one machine and launching Acrobat. If the panel loads, your network team needs to whitelist *.adobe.com and *.adobecc.com for SSL inspection bypass.

6. Raise a case via Adobe Admin Console
Given this is a multi-user enterprise issue, I'd strongly recommend logging a ticket through your Adobe Admin Console rather than waiting on community resolution. Reference Acrobat bug reports around New UX tool panel rendering (builds 24.x) — Adobe's enterprise support team can confirm if there's a tracked fix or hotfix build available for your version.

Happy to dig deeper if you can share the version details and deployment method!

-AV