Change behavior with backup file

Question

Whenever I open a PDF file to view in Acrobat Pro DC (Mac/Catalina 10.15.4, Build: 20.6.20042.371807), it creates a file of the same name prepended with a period and underscore - for example, opening "Test.PDF" creates a file "._Test.PDF" in the same folder. I assume this is some sort of backup file. But when I exit the PDF file by closing acrobat, that backup file remains! I am going through a process for work where I am opening and reviewing a number of PDFs, and I am getting all these other files in the same folder that do not get deleted when I exit viewing each PDF file. So how can I change this behavior, either by (1) stopping the creation of this backup file or (2) having it get deleted when I exit Acrobat?

Thank you for your help!

donaldawalt · Accepted Answer

Found it! Not an Acrobat problem at all. The key was opening the file with any Mac program caused the file to be created. It's a Mac interaction with foreign drives issue:

https://www.cnet.com/news/invisible-files-with-prefix-are-created-on-some-shared-volumes-and-external-disks/

Sorry for tlal the posts, maybe documenting it here will help someone!

donaldawalt · Answer

Actually to clarify - I am running Windows in a VM, under Parallels, on a Mac running Catalina. When I double click on the PDF in the Windows 10 VM, it opens Acrobat on my Mac. This behavior does not seem to occur when opening a PDF on the Mac itself, outside a VM. And, if it helps, the file created is always 4K in size.

Also - If I open Acrobat Pro DC in the Mac desktop, and do File/Open on the same file, no backup is created as far as I can find! AND, if I do File/Save As... and save the open file to a new name, one of thrse backup files is written for it - so now I have two! And they are not deleted on exit.

I also found that if I right click on the PDF in the Windows VM and choose to open the file in Microsoft Word (also on the Mac side), it does so perfectly, yet the backup file still gets created!

I wish I knew what these were! Thanks!

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