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Participant
Mar 31, 2024 8:05 PM UTC
Answered

Disable "Bookmarks" Side Panel whenever opening a PDF

I would like the "Bookmarks" panel to NOT open when I first open an Adobe PDF.  How do I accomplish this?

afrazminhas
afrazminhasCorrect answer
Participant
May 14, 2026 7:19 PM UTC

Right click on right bar where you see bookmark with other icons and select “UNPIN BOOKMARK”, and close bookmark pane manually. it wont open bydefault again when you open pdf. Problem solved. 

Thanks

Afraz

 

 

63 replies

afrazminhas
afrazminhasCorrect answer
Participant
May 14, 2026 7:19 PM UTC

Right click on right bar where you see bookmark with other icons and select “UNPIN BOOKMARK”, and close bookmark pane manually. it wont open bydefault again when you open pdf. Problem solved. 

Thanks

Afraz

 

 

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Sam_11
Participant
May 11, 2026 4:47 PM UTC

This issue is completely absurd, it shrinks the pdf so small and I have to manually close the bookmarks every time now. Adobe needs to fix this.

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afrazminhas
Participant
May 25, 2026 11:03 AM UTC

I posted fix 10 days ago, Check if that works for you.

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rdumon1414
Participating Frequently
May 25, 2026 4:14 PM UTC

And it still isn’t correct. 

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AUniqueUsername
Participant
May 6, 2026 5:59 PM UTC

This is absolutely obnoxious, constant updates and they can’t fix this?  My fix will be a different application...

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Da_Real_Madao
Participant
Apr 22, 2026 2:28 PM UTC

Can’t even thumb down the “Correct Answer” since it doesn’t help at all! 

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chloe.g
Participant
Apr 9, 2026 12:21 AM UTC

Adjusting default view settings only has an effect on the “All tools” pane. It has no effect on the Bookmark pane, which always opens if a document has bookmarks. But I don’t care if a document has bookmarks. I DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM! You can’t even just shrink it down because it doesn’t even store the splitter distance. It also doesn’t make sense to store the bookmark pane setting in the document itself. A lot of academic literature contains a comprehensive bookmark list, but we can’t be opening and saving every document. That method doesn’t even work by the way, but even if it did, it wouldn’t be considered a solution.

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When someone answers my question with "How long is a piece of string?", I throw a null reference exception.
matqwertygl
Participant
Mar 12, 2026 11:09 AM UTC

This is beyond a joke, I must open over 100 PDF documents a day, if not three times and every time I close the bookmark.  ADOBE, we pay for this software fix the f@£$$£ ISSUE!

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sefgvdrgrg
Participant
Mar 9, 2026 12:52 PM UTC

ADOBE! REACT NOW !!!

 

This issue has been reported repeatedly and is wasting your user’s a lot of time. How can this easy fix take so long? 

I wont wait any longer and use/recommend alternatives to Adobe. This is ridiculous. 

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ranv09
Participant
Feb 6, 2026 10:22 PM UTC

Super-annoying when trying to review multiple pdfs. Maybe Adobe can ask AI to write some code to fix this very annoying problem.

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Userguynameplace
Participant
Jan 30, 2026 11:13 PM UTC

How does Adobe allow a bug like this to exist? In Foxit I was able to disable bookmarks with a few clicks of the mouse.

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Participant
Oct 21, 2025 11:46 AM UTC

This issue has caused me to stop using Acrobat Reader on my macs

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