Participant

Answered

Acrobat scrolling is incredibly laggy and slow

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
October 6, 2019
34 replies
249387 views

Hello,

For the last two years I have had consistent problems with Acrobat Pro DC being extremely slow/stuttery while scrolling, highlighting, commenting on a document. This happens no matter what the size of the PDF is from less than 1 MB to 10+ MB. It appears to be very poorly optimized compared to other professional software titles which all run smoothly on macOS: Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, etc. I have tried deleting the prefernce files outlined in other topics, which did nothing to alleviate the issue at all.

My computer is a relatively powerful: 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro connected to an eGPU with Radeon RX 580 and an LG 4K monitor (more than enough power to edit PDFs). I am running the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and macOS Mojave and have never seen these issues alleviated by two years of updates.

Given the cost of this software, I would really appreciate some help from Adobe's support team, as well as an indication that they are planning on doing something about what is clearly an egregious lack of concern over glaring optimization issues. Having spoken with other macOS users (I work in I.T.), this is not merely an individual user issue but a broader problem plaguing Adobe Acrobat in general.

P. S. I have disabled the Show Online storage while opening and saving files, as suggested in other threads to no avail.

Correct answer joe---

What worked for me (based on suggestion from another user here) was to uncheck "Smooth images" in Preferences > Page Display > Rendering.

Show previous replies

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Palamont

Participant

I'm facing the same issue as well - using Macbook Pro 2016 (15 inch) and Macbook Air M1 (2020) but both facing the same scroll laggy/jittery problem. I can't read the pdf for a long period without feeling giddy.

However, on my android phone, the reading experience is smooth.

A

andrews11502512

Participating Frequently

Is there any chance Adobe will fix this fundamental problem? I have not been able to scroll smoothly for years, and I have several high-end Macs. Preview scrolls fast and smoothly. What is the point of a PDF program if its main function doesn't function?

R

radfordd83207392

Participant

I'll echo what everyone else is saying. Adobe Pro DC is horrible when it comes to scrolling and trying to work with a PDF. So much lag and choppiness to the scrolling and paging through a document. I hate it. Using the Mac Preview program until Adobe fixes this issue. It's not the user, it's Adobe. Fix it already!

Y

Yosenechal

Participant

Followed your counsel and used Preview. Trying to decode why Acrobat was laggy, let alone the lags in my ability to work led to massive losses of productivity. I felt like an Olympic skater when I used Preview on iMac. Thanks!

A

andrews11502512

Participating Frequently

Sure. I assume Adobe just isn’t interested in figuring out a solution. It doesn’t even acknowledge the problem, which people have been reporting for years.

Andrew

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default4xvqugrpj0dv

Participant

Hi, I just suscribed for Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and have the exact problem I have an Macbook air 2021

It seems that its been ongoing for years and Adobe cant fix it for Macbook users?

I have the 2021.007.20091 version

rogerd9949835

Participant

Did the "Read Mode" maneuver and the "Change display" maneuver,

to no avail.

But closed and reopned acrobat, and the scrolling is no normal again.

Whether the maneuvers mattered I'll never know.

A

ambitious_dancer5EFE

Participant

I never had any issues with this until this week. I have a dell desktop for doing cad and have used this software for three years and have not had this issue. All of a sudden i can't scroll through the pdf files. Like mentioned previously it doesn't matter the size. I work with lots of multiple page files so it incredably frustraiting.

I've tried the suggestions in this thread and nothing has worked.

K

Katie5FE6

Participant

Our entire office has this problem with Acrobat on MacOS. Scrolling through more complex drawings (e.g. archiectural) or documents with comments seem to freeze the program entirely. Even migrating to a brand new, powerful iMac hasn't resolved the issue, yet my 8-year-old PC laptop doesn't have this issue.

None of the solutions below have worked for us, and we're getting tired of reading everything in Mac Preview.

The problem started with Acrobat X out of the blue, yet still persists when we upgraded to Acrobat Pro DC. It's been years Adobe—time to fix this.

k3mike

Participating Frequently

I agree entirely with your assessment Katie. We've been struggling with laggy Acrobat Pro DC performance for a long time. It did seem to work better before Acrobat X.

I'm trying to prepare a proposal for a project and the drawing set is 235MB, which I'll admit is a large file, but my machine was built to handle things like this all day long.

We pay a lot of money for our Adobe software products every year and this totally unacceptable that I have to search forums trying to find answers to make your product do what it's supposed to do. There shouldn't be any "custom resolutions" or settings required to scroll through a PDF document.

NOTE: I searched for this forum topic and typed this entire post while the stupid beach ball continues to spin on the PDF that I'm trying to review.

I have a 2017 iMac 5K with 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 64 GB RAM, Radeon Pro graphics card, and a Solid State Drive. The file is local on my machine, and I have a very fast network connection.

It's still spinning.

J

Jay5C2A

Participant

I had a similiar issue, very laggy, on just a text pages , and images.

The problem for me was the Acrobat/Preference/ Resolution setting. I had switched to "use system settings" which screw it up.

I now put in a 'custom' resolution. Try what # works for you. 110 was good for me. I'm on a Mac Pro 2019, using a 27" monitor.

kaadeewee

Participating Frequently

No, on Mac it is NOT FIXED! I am a CC-subscriber, but for reading PDFs I am using Apple Preview because the stuttering choppy scrolling of PDFs is unbearable on an iMac with a Radeon Pro Vega graphic card. Latest version, all accessibility features turned off…

In Preview scrolling through pages is smooth as butter, in Acrobat the page jumps in 40 pixel jumps or more…

It's rididulous. ADOBE, show some love to the Adobe Acrobat on MAC!!!

M

Mahmoud5DD6

Participant

Same here. I'm not hoping this will be fixed soon.

T

testt68221009

Participant

Same here, on a Macbook Pro 2019... On my five year old Windows computer it runs smooth.

Meenakshi Negi

Community Manager

Hi All,

Thank you for reporting this issue.

We see that this has been an ongoing issue and long-tailed.

We have tried to replicate this issue on our end. However, the issue cannot be reproduced in-house. That is why we need a few details for further investigation on this. It would be helpful if you can share the following information:

- Please share any sample PDF on which the issue can be reproduced.

- If possible, share the screen recording of the issue occurring on your end.

- Application (https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/identify-product-version.html) and OS version used on the machine.

- If you are using the Windows machine, please collect the Process Monitor logs. Download the Process monitor tool from this link: https://labs.adobe.com/downloads/acrobatmonitor.html on your machine and run it. Then reproduce the issue and save the logs. Share the logs with us.

We will be waiting for your response.

Regards,

Meenakshi

R

R5CB3

Participant

I also am having this issue. I am a lawyer and often have 3 or 4 large PDFs open on the screen. I often highlight a few lines/ paragraphs. I've noticed recently that laggy scrolling is becoming a really big problem - sometimes several seconds pass between moving the wheel on my mouse and the screen finally juddering down to where it's supposed to be on the PDF.

Very surprising that Adob cannot replicate this problem in-house. I'd have thought all you need to do is get any PC and start opening a few big PDFs and highlighting etc.

I have wondered if the issue is caused in part by high-def screens. My laptop has a 2560x1440 screen, so the processor has a fair bit of work to do to keep PDFs sharp when they're moving around. But I think really the issue is with Adobe Acrobat, not the computer - it is a fairly recent i7, with 16GB Ram.

I think Adobe need to look into this problem in more detail. I have already become so frustrated that I am trying alternative PDF readers. They do not seem to render PDFs quite as sharply - but they certainly scroll more smoothly.

jbl123

Participant

Here's what finally worked for me: Switch to Read Mode (Ctrl-H). It scrolls the way you expect it to in this mode. But it gets better... hit Ctrl-H again to get back to the normal view, and like magic, scrolling is now fixed!!