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Christopher221775325v28
Participant
February 12, 2026
Question

Error message ("This document contains embedded actions (e.g. OpenAction or Additional Actions)...") when signing document in Acrobat, caused by setting the 'Initial view - Magnification' setting?

  • February 12, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 155 views

A coworker reported this error message today when trying to digitally sign a document in Acrobat:
 

"This document contains embedded actions (e.g. OpenAction or Additional Actions). These actions are supported in this version of Acrobat, but may be disabled in future versions. For long-term compatibility, consider requesting a version without embedded actions form the document author."


The error message includes a link to this page with a bit more information:
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/embedded-action-signing-warning.html



Given that we produce a lot of documents that are signed by the public, this message was concerning. The documents don't have any JavaScript or anything added by us, although some PDFs were exported from InDesign. The staff member is using version 2025.001.20997. This error doesn't seem to happen in earlier Acrobat versions, we also tested with 2025.001.20630.
 

We did a little more troubleshooting and found that the error message appears only if you set the 'Initial View -> Magnification' setting to anything other than 'Default'. If you leave this setting at 'Default', no error message appears when signing the document. This setting must be adding some sort of OpenAction that is triggering the error message. I anticipate we're going to get a lot of reports about this once all our users are updated to the latest version of Acrobat.
 

Has anyone else run into this?
 

This makes me wonder, is Adobe getting ready to deprecate other 'Initial View' settings?
 

2 replies

Lori5D3E
Lori5D3E
Participant
April 23, 2026

Did you resolved this error you received in the PDFs recently? We just started seeing this error/warning message in our PDFs too and never had it before. I do always change our Magnification to 100% rather than Default so I removed that but this error message did not go away. Were you able to resolve receiving this error message by just using Magnification as Default (as that didn’t work for me) - not sure why this message is starting now - never received it before.

C
Christopher221775325v28Author
Participant
April 24, 2026

I’d double check to make sure that none of the other ‘Initial View’ settings were set to anything other than ‘Default’.  My understanding is that any adjustments to those settings (not just magnification) will cause the error to show up on newer version of Acrobat.  

Adobe support did provide us with a registry change that will suppress the error message. I can try and find it for you if it’s something that would be helpful.  Our IT department rolled the registry change out across all our users, so for the time being the error isn’t bothering anyone.  

Good luck!

    Meenakshi0101
    Community Manager
    Meenakshi0101Community Manager
    Community Manager
    April 28, 2026

    Hi Lori5D3E,

     

    Thank you for reaching out.

     

    We will check with the team for more information on this and share it with you.

    In the meantime, we suggest to keep the default settings enabled. 

     

    Let us know if you have any questions or need help.

     

    Thanks,

    Meenakshi

     

    creative explorer
    Community Expert
    creative explorerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 14, 2026

    ​@Christopher221775325v28 I do things a little different. I have my Acrobat Settings set to default or automatic: Command K (MAC) Control K (PC) to open Acrobat Preferences

    Page Display:
     

     

    Accessibility:
     


    and when I am working in InDesign, and need to export a PDF, the viewing is always set to default
     

     

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