Acrobat needs to be restarted to print when changing Windows default printer from work to home

Question

I print on two different printers, an HP OfficeJet Pro 9020 series at work and an HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series at home. I work Mon, Wed, Fri at work and Tue, Thu at home. I close my laptop at work and go home, then in the morning I change the default printer to the one for home. I leave Acrobat running when , with files I am still need to work with them. I hit CTRL-P to print, the print dialog box opens and I see that the new default printer is shown, but when I print, the dialog box goes away and Acrobat goes back to the current PDF, but nothing else happens. There is no print progress bar, nothing prints, nothing is in the Windows print queue.

The workaround is to close Acrobat completely, open it again, open the document I want to print, and when I print, it works. If I had other documents open, I then need to find and open each document again. Since I work with dozens of PDFs a day, it takes a long time to find them. I also have a workaround for this secondary problem. Before I restart Acrobat, I use the File | Save as... command to save each file again so when Acrobat restarts, I can select all of the most recent files I just saved and open them up again.

What should be done is to have the Acrobat printing code more robust so that changing the default Windows printer doesn't require a restart of Acrobat. All other programs I use do not require a restart in order to print to the newly changed default printer.

Does anyone know a solution that doesn't required getting Adobe's programmers involved?

Sys Info:

Microsoft Surface Pro 9 | Windows 11 | Acrobat Pro 64-bit v2023.003.20284

RAO3446382319re · Answer

While it's understandable that you want a solution that doesn't involve getting Adobe's programmers involved, the issue you're facing seems to be specific to Adobe Acrobat's behavior, and resolving it may require changes to the software itself. However, there are a few things you can try to see if they help improve the situation:

Print as Image: In Acrobat, go to "File" > "Print" > "Advanced" and check the "Print as Image" option. This can sometimes resolve printing issues related to document rendering.
Update Acrobat: Make sure you have the latest updates and patches installed for Adobe Acrobat. Sometimes, issues like these are addressed in software updates.
Printer Drivers: Ensure that your printer drivers are up to date for both the HP OfficeJet Pro 9020 series and the HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series. Outdated or incompatible drivers can cause printing problems.
Print to PDF: As a workaround, you can try printing the document to a PDF file first and then printing the PDF file to the desired printer. This may help bypass the issue.
Print Queue Check: After changing the default printer, open the print queue (you can do this by going to "Devices and Printers," right-clicking on the printer, and selecting "See what's printing"). Check if the print job is stuck in the queue. If it is, you may be able to restart or cancel the job.
Task Manager Check: After changing the default printer, open the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and check if any Acrobat-related processes are running. If so, try ending them and then attempt to print again.
These points may be beneficial for you as I have tried this on my printer and it works.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded