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Adobe Acrobat Pro: Access to Preflight Feature

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I recently got a new PC and the IT department installed all the latest Adobe products, including Adobe Acrobat Pro (Version: 2026.002.21931 | 64-bit). However, now I don’t have access to the Preflight feature. Here are the steps I normally take to access Preflight and the results:

Open my PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

In the Search bar, type Print Production. From the left pane, I click Preflight. I get a message that WIndows is configuring Adobe.

A dialog box, Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device, opens. Since I don’t have admin rights to make these types of changes to my PC, I click No.

I get the following error message:

I click OK and get another message prompting me to install manually.

I click Install Now and the Download Acrobat 64-bit for Windows page opens. But, I already have Adobe Acrobat Pro 64-bit installed.

I opened an IT ticket but our admin says that this is not a matter of having admin rights; it looks like the Preflight option may not be working.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

mary_n_fingerlakesAuthor

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Hi @Dave Creamer of IDEAS - I already tried Use print production > Preflight. See my initial post for details. Thank you for responding.

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Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Yes, but IT (as an Admin user) needs to do it.

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

DanielBrooks8807

Participating Frequently

To answer your two follow-ups from an IT/print side:

1) Preflight download: There is no separate Preflight installer to download. Preflight is installed on first use from within Acrobat itself — that is the 'Windows is configuring Adobe' prompt you are seeing. An admin needs to do that first launch once for you: sign in as admin, open Acrobat, go to All tools / Print Production > Preflight, accept the UAC prompt and let it finish. After that one-time component install it should open normally under your own non-admin account, which is almost certainly what happened on your predecessor's PC. If it still loops, the admin should run Help > Repair Installation (also as admin) rather than downloading Acrobat again.

2) The resolution figures are checked, not really 'modified', in two places:

- Before export: in InDesign, Window > Links shows each image's Effective PPI at its placed size — that is the number that needs to be 225+ for colour/grey (300 is the usual print target) and much higher, 600-1200, for 1-bit line-art scans. FrameMaker shows similar info in the Object Properties for the selected graphic.

- After export: in Acrobat Preflight, choose a profile such as 'Digital printing and online publishing' or a PDF/X profile, run Analyse, and the report flags images below the profile's ppi thresholds. You can edit a copy of a profile (Preflight > Options > Edit Profiles > Images) to change those thresholds, but normally you fix the source image/layout rather than the check.

- Fonts: Preflight's report also lists fonts and whether they are embedded — with Segoe UI etc., just confirm 'embedded subset' in File > Properties > Fonts in Acrobat after export.

So the practical ask to IT is small: 10 minutes with admin rights, first-run of Preflight once, not a permanent admin account for you.

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mary_n_fingerlakesAuthor

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@DanielBrooks8807 - Thank you for your support! I’ve forwarded the pertinent Preflight details onto our IT department and I verified that my Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe InDesign settings are sufficient. I appreciate the detailed response.

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Karl Heinz Kremer

Community Expert

You will need to work with your IT department to provide you local admin access - or have them run through this step of downloading/settting up the preflight feature.

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mary_n_fingerlakesAuthor

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@Dave Creamer of IDEAS and @Karl Heinz Kremer - thank you for your responses. My IT department strictly prohibits employees from having admin access. I’ve sent your responses to the IT team to see where we can go from here.

However, I’m wondering if there is another workaround. My predecessor used Preflight as part of her cleanup process before she handed off her PDF files to our outside vendor. I’ve continued to use that process without a complete understanding of what Preflight actually does. What does Preflight do and is there a similar feature within Adobe that would give me high-quality print PDFs? For example, would it be enough to set my Publish Settings in Adobe FrameMaker to PrintSettings.STS before saving my PDF?

Thank you.

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Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Preflight, in this context, is the process of inspecting (and possibly fixing) problems with a PDF before it is sent to the printer. (It can be used for other checking other types of PDFs too, such as for archival and engineering.)

Are you planning to commercial print your FrameMaker-produced PDF (print and distribute) or are you planning on sending out the PDF and let the end users print it (distribute and print)?

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

I believe the Preflight feature needs to be downloaded when first used. After that, it stays available.

This is to keep the initial download and install time shorter since the group that uses Preflight is much smaller than the business users.

Since you are modifying the program, you most likely will need admin access.

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

mary_n_fingerlakesAuthor

Inspiring

Hi @Dave Creamer of IDEAS - Thank you. Where exactly would I (or someone with admin access) download the Preflight feature from?

Also, you mentioned in your above post, “As long as your incoming images have enough resolution* and you are not using any protected fonts**, High-Quality Print should be fine.”

I’m not familiar on where and how to modify the following options you listed:

*Color and grayscale images should be no less that 225 at size used on layout. Scans of line art should be scanned in line art or black-and-white mode, saved as LZW-compressed TIFF at no less that 1200 ppi. These must be scanned using these settings; the files cannot be “retrofitted” after the fact.

Can you provide more detail please?

As far as fonts, for my Adobe FrameMaker documents, I use Segoe UI and for my Adobe InDesign documents, I use Museo Sans. I think these should be ok, right?

Thank you.

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