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New Participant
May 21, 2025
Answered

Acrobat distiller unable to create the temporary folder error 5

  • May 21, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 16912 views

Good morning, I have been receiving this error message for several days. I have already checked, as reported in other posts, that the Adobe Acrobat folder in TEMP had the correct permissions and it does because I can write to it. I also uninstalled Adobe Acrobat and reinstalled it but the problem persists. What else could I do?

Thanks

Correct answer PravalJain

Apologies for the inconvience. This issue is fixed in the latest update. Release notes - https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotesDC/continuous/dccontinuoussep2025sec.html#dccontinuousseptwentytwentyfivesec.

 

Please do a "Help -> Check for updates" to update to the latest version and let us know if you still see issues. 

3 replies

New Participant
August 21, 2025

I only started getting this error when I booted up this morning. I'd never heard of Distiller before, so I got a screenshot and went straight to Google to wise-up.
The highlighted line from Google's AI overview stated: "usually stems from insufficient permissions on the designated temporary folder or related Adobe folders". When I opened up Distiller and had a browse through my settings, I looked into 'Fonts' and noticed that one of the font location folders was aimed at a program I had recently uninstalled and was greyed out. It's not like I unistalled that last night, so it isn't a blatant reason for the error, and I only removed that invalid font target minutes before typing this, so I can't guarantee it has resolved the problem yet.
I'm just hoping it's fixed my errors and is the kind of thing you might want to check.

Participating Frequently
September 3, 2025

Besides uninstalling/reinstalling, is there a different solution to this issue?

New Participant
May 27, 2025

I have a computer that's been getting the same exact error.  I have tried all of the troubleshooting recommendations and even have contacted Adobe support a few times, which haven't been helpful because they have just suggested uninstalling/reinstalling, using Acrocleaner, installing the latest update, checking permissions for C:\Windows\Temp, and C:\Windows\Temp\Acrobat Distiller DC.  I have performed all of these steps, even manually deleting Adobe folders after the uninstall, which Acrocleaner did not remove.

This error will just randomly pop-up a few times a day, sometimes more.  I have asked this question to Adobe support numberous time and for some reason nobody is able to answer.  The question is, where can I find the folder that the Adobe software is trying to access that is prompting this pop-up?  Is there a registry setting?  A hidded Adobe setting?  If someone could point me to this, because it doesn't seem to be the %temp% folder since the permissions are correct, then this would be very helpful.  The error has Adobe Distiller listed so is there a setting somewhere with Distiller?  Also, why isn't the software logging something useful in the Windows event log about this for troubleshooting?

New Participant
June 24, 2025

Having the same issues with one of our users as well, this message randomly pops up throughout the day, i have tried all suggested methods of trying to resolve but nothing seems to fix it. 

New Participant
June 26, 2025

We too have recently started to experience the same issue with several users. I've manage to resolve the issue on 2 of the affected machines, here are the steps I took:

Identify which version of Adobe Acrboat they have installed (On the 2 systems they had a 32x installed on a 64x system)

Uninstall everything related to Adobe

Run Adobe Acrocleaner

Restart the machine 

Install latest version and correct bit version of Adobe Acrobat 

-Disable 'Enable Protected Mode at Startup' in the following settings - Acrobat > Preferences Security (Enhanced).

 

I know the steps I took are the Adobe 'standards' but I thought it would be worth mentioning just incase. 

 

-We disable 'Enable Protected Mode at Startup' as the particular clients have in-house software that would cause Adobe to crash with this option enabled. 

try67
Adobe Expert
May 21, 2025

What's the exact version number of the application (You can find it out by going to Help - About Adobe Acrobat)? What's your OS version?

Meenakshi Negi
Community Manager
Community Manager
May 21, 2025

Hi avid_project8988,

 

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry about the trouble.

 

Please refer to the information on the following help document in Error 5: https://adobe.ly/3Fl0luO. Check if that helps.

 

If the issue still occurs, please share a screenshot of the error message you receive. Also, could you share the machine's Acrobat and OS versions?

 

Let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks,

Meenakshi

AnandSri
Community Manager
Community Manager
June 12, 2025

So would uninstalling the AdobeGCClient be a potential fix? I have a user that the error went away after a uninstall/reinstall but another user the error persists.


Hello!

 

I hope you are doing well, and we are sorry for the trouble and the delayed response.

 

The engineering team has already been notified of the issue and is working on a fix. We will update the thread once the fix is available publicly.

 

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.