PDFMaker creates PDF, then Word crashes — Acrobat 2024 and Microsoft 365 on Windows 11

Hi everyone,

I’m troubleshooting an intermittent Word crash when converting documents through Adobe PDFMaker.

Environment:

• Microsoft 365 Word: version 16.0.20527.20088, Current Channel

• Adobe Acrobat Classic 2024: [insert verified current version]

• Windows 11: version 25H2

When I select File → Save as Adobe PDF in Word, the PDF is created and opens successfully, but Word sometimes crashes immediately afterward. When I reopen Word, I receive this message:

“Word is running into problems with the 'pdfmaker.officeaddin' add-in. If this keeps happening, disable this add-in and check for available updates. Do you want to disable it now?”

This happens approximately one-third of the time. The user relies on this feature frequently throughout the day.

What I’ve tried:

1. Uninstalled Acrobat 2020 and installed Acrobat 2024. The issue persists.

2. Reproduced the problem with a new Word document containing only one sentence, so it isn’t limited to a particular document.

3. Disabled PDFMaker, repaired Acrobat 2024, performed a Quick Repair of Microsoft 365, rebooted, and re-enabled PDFMaker. The issue persists. 

4. Confirmed that PDFMaker is the only enabled COM add-in in Word.

5. Disabled PDFMaker and tested File → Export → Create PDF/XPS with a one-sentence document. The PDF was created successfully, and Word remained open without errors.

Event Viewer findings:

Two recent Application Error events (Event ID 1000) for WINWORD.EXE show:

• Faulting module: mso40uiwin32client.dll; exception code: 0xc0000005

• Faulting module: ntdll.dll; exception code: 0xc0000374

Both occurred with Word version 16.0.20527.20088. The log also contains similar Word crashes predating the Acrobat upgrade.

Has anyone encountered this behavior with Acrobat Classic 2024 and Microsoft 365? Are there known compatibility issues, PDFMaker settings, or additional diagnostic steps I should check?

I purchased Acrobat 2024 hoping the upgrade would resolve this, but the same problem remains.

Thanks,
Franco