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James30818644amb9
James30818644amb9
Participant
June 30, 2023
Answered

Hide "All tools" pane?

  • June 30, 2023
  • 19 replies
  • 162621 views

Same problem as everyone else under the sun: I cannot figure out how to permanently hide the "All Tools" menu on Acrobat Pro 2023.003.20215.

 

Preferences > Documents > Open Settings > Remember Current State ... is just missing for me (and apparently for others, too.) And, depressingly, the registry keys bRHPSticky and bExpandRHPinViewer don't seem to affect Acrobat Pro.

 

Having to close and re-close the "All Tools" menu every single time I open a new PDF, all day every day, is exhausting and I hate it. Does anyone know a fix for this (aside from switching away from Adobe)?

    Correct answer Marvelous_soul6483

    Here’s what worked for me:

    Disabled New User Experience

    Running Adobe Pro version 2025.001.20435 (64 Bit) on Win 11

    To disable the new experience,

    • Click the hamburger menu ( 3 lines ) at the upper left corner and choose Disable new Acrobat

    Tools Pane

    To prevent the Tools pane from opening by default in Adobe Acrobat  go to: Menu > Preferences > Documents and select "Remember last state of All tools pane when opening documents," then collapse the Tools pane, and save. 

    Navigation Pane / Bookmarks etc (Global Hide)

    Right click on open pdf file. Navigate to: Document Properties\Initial View(Tab)\Navigation and change Bookmarks Panel and Page to Page Only.  Then save .  However, only works for that single document when opened in future.

    If you want to turn off panes or all pdf files opened regardless of what set by creator and not have to change initial view and save then edit the registry.

     

    Launch %windir%\regedit.exe
    Navigate to:  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Acrobat.Document.DC\shell\Open\command

    String to be modified is similar to this:
    "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" "%1"

    Change to: "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /A "navpanes=0" "%1"

     

    Every pdf file from every location now opens up without the panes. Been annoying me for years.

    19 replies

    Show previous replies
    K
    Ken354587877k8a
    Participant
    February 14, 2024

    Thank you!

    D
    David34403508he8t
    Participant
    December 21, 2023

    James

    There is no Disable New Acrobat when I click Menu.  What next?

    David

      B
      br1sj
      Participant
      November 29, 2023

      I accidentally found the solution to this issue.  Right click on the right side panel>>Unpin contents (or anything else being pinned)

      C
      Case2152
      Participant
      October 22, 2023

      OMG.. thank you!!

       

      C
      Caine32910379h2il
      Participant
      October 13, 2023

      This is absurd.

        D
        Deborah32906663lzpr
        Participant
        October 13, 2023

        Thank you, James! The "All tools" panel was driving me crazy, too! I appreciate it!

        B
        Benjamin323674807sfq
        Participant
        September 28, 2023

        I've found a working solution for admins that want to push this out en-masse to their users.  While I'm not on the latest version of Reader (due to other problems with the "New Adobe" and my users), I am running 2023.003.20284.  I know there is a vulnerability in this version, but we have pretty tight security and this is in a non-persistent VDI environment.
        The solution was actually a combination of two solutions posted to this problem for ages.

        HKCU bRHPSticky = 1 DWORD

        HKCU bExpandRHPInViewer = 0
        Rename Appcenter_R.aapp, Home.aapp and Viewer.aapp in Program directory\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroApp\ENU
        By using GPO, even new users have their PDF's open with no toolbars on either side of a PDF now.  Small things make them happy, so I figured I'd share.  This is 32-bit version of Reader (64-bit was crashing all the time) btw.

        J
        James308817653e9h
        Participating Frequently
        July 4, 2023

        I'm using Adobe Acrobat Reader ver2023.003.20215/64-bit. I do not have the option to revert to Old Version. The only thing I have found that works is:

        Open a pdf in Adobe.

        Go to Edit>Preferences>Documents and make sure the top option "Restore last view settings when reopening documents" and the option "Remember current state of tools pane" are UNCHECKED.

        Click Ok to close the Preferences window.

        Close the Toolbar.

        Go back to Edit>Preferences>Documents and check both boxes. Click Ok to close that window again.

        Close that document and when you open another document the Toolbar should stay hidden (it has for me so far).

        Hope this helps.

         

          S
          stang91478321
          Participating Frequently
          September 20, 2023

          Hi!  I'm on a newer version of Acrobat Reader: 2003.006.20320 and, unfortunately, none of the above solutions work.  Any new ideas?

          S
          stang91478321
          Participating Frequently
          September 20, 2023

          Submitted a comment about this not working qith Adome here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/disable-right-hand-pane-in-acrobat-reader.html

          James30818644amb9
          James30818644amb9Author
          Participant
          June 30, 2023

          Found a workaround

          1. Click Menu > (5th category) Disable New Acrobat
          2. Restart Acrobat
          3. Click View > Show/Hide > Tools Pane
            • or press Shift+F4

          That's it!

          You DON'T even need to fiddle with the registry — I deleted bExpandRHPinViewer and bRHPSticky from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\AVGeneral and restarted the program and the toolbar still stayed closed!

            James30818644amb9
            James30818644amb9Author
            Participant
            June 30, 2023

            (I can't edit my posts, dropping references in this comment)

            However, this workaround is very obviously not the true solution. I'm still extremely interested to see what the true solution is.

              J
              John Heimark
              Participant
              August 23, 2023

              I had 3 users complaining about the tools panel being open by default. So happy to have found this fix!

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