Why change everything?

Was this even tested before it was released to the public?

By @DCProud 202

Adobe has pre-release testers for all the Creative Suite programs and Acrobat. Occassionally I see Adobe announce for people to join the testing program.

Many of us community experts here in the forums are testers for Adobe, and many of us have been doing this since the 1980s and 1990s. 

I can't recall much positive feedback from the testers before the "modern" Acrobat was released to the public. I know my comments back to the engineers were fairly extensive. Some things were improved (darkening the icons from a light gray to a dark gray, for example). But for the most part, the comments have fallen on deaf ears.

Over the past 18 months, I personally have continued to use and test the newest beta releases, but I often have to abandon them and switch to another computer that runs the "classic" interface. I have only so much time to donate to Adobe to dignose problems (and provide detailed bug reports and comments to the engineers). I, like most folks here, have a job to do. Working for free for Adobe is not on my to-do list.

3 suggestions:

1. Disable the new Acrobat and revert back to the "classic" interface. I believe that all of the old functionality is still active there.
2. Join the Acrobat beta testing group. I don't know where to direct you to join, but try searching for a public page in the Acrobat section of Adobe's website.
3. Consider another brand of PDF editing software. The PDF file format was placed into the public domain about 15 years ago and since then, other companies have developed competing programs. Wikipedia has a decent list of other brands. One of our favorites is ABBY Fine Reader/PDF.

But note that none of these competing programs have all the features of Acrobat, so if you're in certain industries, you're really stuck with Adobe Acrobat. These industry-specific features include:

• Accessible PDFs and documents
• PDF forms
• Printing, graphic arts, and preflighting for print
• Security
• Digital signatures
• Automated PDF documents (aka, stuff like bank statements created from a database a on grand scale)

So see if any other alternative brand gets the job done for you. Be careful of the company's country of origin: you might not be able to install software from certain countries, which is the case here in the US for government computers.  Example: FoxIt is a Chinese company and usually is not allowed on our government clients' computers.

As always, don't forget to voice your comments on UserVoice and click the button to VOTE. That is the only place where Adobe takes notice of customers.

Let Adobe know:

You can voice your opinion about the new interface at UserVoice: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/47082691-ditch-t... 

Be sure to leave a comment about your experience with the new interface. They need to hear from users. And don't forget to click the VOTE button.

FYI, UserVoice is Adobe's official website where it reads and takes into account suggestions and complaints from users of its various products.  On the other hand, this community forum is a user-to-user help forum.