Participant

Answered

Acrobat - 2023 Changes Are Beyond Awful... Or Is It Just Me?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 24, 2023
58 replies
36146 views

Who thought it a good idea to change nearly everything at once?

Guess what - most of us are working for a living and don't have time for hours of tutorials and having to sift through support forums to find out how to use software that has been one of the back-bones of our work-flow.

As a designer working in the construction industry, along with being a skilled graphic designer, (you name the Adobe product, I have probably used it) I have found Acrobat to be an excellent, can't live without tool over the years, but this new version has hidden every bit of functionalityy that I personally need.

Am I asking for help here? No. I simply don't have time to mess around while some hotshot new designer celebrates his/her/it's new internal slaps on the back for a job 'well done' at Adobe, and the team scrabble around to answer some of the complaints.

To say I am dissapointed, is an understatement.

Before anyone says it, there are always complaints when software interfaces are changed. But mostly these are rolled out as minor changes, that after a bit of grumbling, people learn and accept, and everyone understands why software must develop. Not wholesale changes such as these..

I have been using Bluebeam Revu recently in tandem with Acrobat, and I am gutted to find myself having to turn to it rather than the Adobe that I have used and loved for decades.

So here are just a few gripes...

No longer can I automatically zoom in and out using a mouse wheel. Presumably there is a way of 'turning this on' hidden away in the depths of the many sub menus. Or does the sdesigner only use a tablet?

It's a basic function that makes it a useable tool, so why is it turned off. Now I have to look in opposite corners for the Pan tool and the Zoom functions. What was wrong with the hovering menu at the foot of the page with all the tools to hand? The select, zoom and pan tools are the three most useful tools to have readily available. It is almost as though the person / peeps who has/have re-designed it, doesn't use it personally. Except perhaps to read a copy of their latest comic.

I can't be bothered to continue and resent needing to.

The question is... do I stay or do I go?

Give me a really good reason to stay Adobe.. Please.

Modern Acrobat

Correct answer Patrick31582352vq9r

Just a post to concur.

Thank goodness they provided, and I finally found, the option to revert to "old adobe". I was struggling w/ the new markup tools which really slowed down my progress for a few weeks. I thought I could get used to it... but no, all my easy markup tasks are still much more cumbersome. Why can't "escape" button close out the tool you're using (text box...)? Nope, lets just keep adding text boxes everytime you click until you click on a new tool?

A

anxley_1023

Participant

I am having to recreate all my forms because the fill function doesn't work.. I don't know who vetted this "upgrade" but it is not.

Park Street Printers

Known Participant

To quote an irritated user who posted on User Voice, before the number one thread for Acrobat was taken down, "The UI designer should be sent to North Korea and forced to dig his own grave". Maybe a bit extreme, but I think it neatly encapsulates our feelings about the New Acrobat. By the way, the threads that Bevi Chagnon started now state that the requested changes were implemented, which is absolute gaslighting of the highest order. If I couldn't revert to the Old Acrobat, I would have to find a new pdf creator/editor.

S

sandy_3174

Participant

It's not just you! It's the worst, it not just that the right is on the left (I mean give us the option, some of us are working with three monitors here) but the old features no longer work. E-signature is maxed at 10mb and everything takes five clicks to initate.

S

ShilohJSBI

Participant

This is the worse upgrade ever. I have used Adobe for years in the construction industry. The old version was great, not sure why they changed Adobe to basically useless software. I have to go to Canva to fix my pdfs. I miss the old version. I spend so many hours fixing things that would have taken seconds to fix in the previous software. Hope they fix all these issues.

M

maura_2524

Participant

Agree. The new version is also freezing the entire system everytime I try to search or to leave a comment. It's pretty miserable to work within. It was much better functioning before the new updates and changes. These are probably all glitches, but as a CPA, it's making it almost impossible to review tax documents timely and efficiently. I'm having staff print the pdf so that I can make comments mannualy so that we can make the tax deadlines.

H

H@nnesOVDS

Participant

I honestly can't believe I pay for this program. Acrobat is the worst tool I have and crashes all the time, UI sucks and just causes endless delays.

J

Jennie36703268lhkw

Participant

I have to agree. The new adobe is absolutely HORRIBLE. I literally get a pit in my stomach when I have to use it. It isn't user friendly, it is completely counter intuitive and absolutely the worst program I use in my job. I'm an electrical designer and use complicated programs on a daily basis with no issues. Adobe should be easy for anyone to use. It isn't anything like the engineering tools I use. But I couldn't be more disappointed with adobe. As we speak I am editing a pdf. It errors out and closes on its own. Lost hours of work, and those hours of work should've been a simple half hour job. Yet adobe has seemed to make it take three times as long to complete. Absolutely horrible program. I will make sure to inform EVERYONE that works in the industry to stay away from the new adobe. My coworkers also

complain about it and state it takes them twice as long to complete jobs that use pdfs because of this horrible horrible program. Whoever created this design absolutely is out of touch with what people need and want. Couldn't be worse. It is the worst program I use on a daily basis.!

M

MindfulMountain

Participating Frequently

I LITERALLY CAN DO NOTHING USING ADOBE ANYMORE!!! I have Adobe Pro AND had to also get Adobe Premium, I guess... plus I have Adobe Photoshop and LIghtroom, etc. But I have NO IDEA why NOTHING works!! I used to be able to easily take a PDF form that I use for legal filings, and change a couple of things (even if I had saved it as a scanned image) and quickly delete words and change to a different word and now I can do NONE of that! Instead of deleting, I get a red strike-through - NOT HELPFUL. The OCR scanner used to be excellent and now it does not work at ALL on some pages for no good reason. I have just extracted a page that will NOT OCR to see if there is some way to convert it and then add it BACK to my document... I mean.. WHAT AM I PAYING MULTIPLE DIFFERENT MONTHLY PLANS FOR??? And I have a brand new PC where I just uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe, to no avail. Also, sometimes if I could not do something on my PC, I could do it using my ipad adobe app... well can't do THAT anymore either!!!

I am seriously over this. Adobe must have some other HIGE niche area (maybe government contracts or something?) that has made it just not give a flying F about its regular users who have relied upon its products for their livelihoods for many. many years. Funny, but I had avoided adobe for so many years previously, using a different PDF editor program, but because so many things were intertwined with Adobe I eventually got ALL the different plans I needed...but this is ridiculous. I can actually still use my very old different PDF editor program with absolutely no problems whatsoever. And that is what I am going to have to do again because I just CANNOT waste the amount of time I have had to waste with Adobe anymore!!! I am literally so frustrated I am about to CRY.

Tiger_words

Inspiring

Sorry to hear this. I wish I could help you. It's ridiculous. And keep in mind, programmers are paid to do this nonsense. If they don't constantly "improve" things, they'll get laid off. It's literally one of the dumbest dynamics in the 21st century.

T

Teresa36409784s6ol

Participant

I do not like the new Adobe, the little right rail is a nuisance and the large tool bar on the left, you have to go through more than usual steps to insert or delete pages and the pasty white background of everything is very annoying. I miss my darker background because the pages of the document stand out, now they just blend into oblivion.

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Paul26602033ex8m

Participant

I agree the latest changes are beyond aweful.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

Wish List

Fellow Acrobat users!

I want to turn our complaints into something useful for Adobe's development team, so I wrote up some key fixes to the new interface that will help us get the tools we need while giving Adobe a better interface for Acrobat's future features.

Please take a minute to review my wish list.

And please add your ideas to it!

Keep it positive and helpful. (They already know how much we hate it, they got the message.)
Suggestions on what you want to see changed or restored.
Just address the interface, not what features you want (that's for another post).

And be sure to describe what you use Acrobat for, how it's used for work or your personal computing. It's clear that the Adobe design team may have missed how various industries rely on Acrobat, so here's your chance to let them know what you need in the interface.

I believe it's our last chance to get the Acrobat we need before Adobe carves the new interface into stone.

The wish list is at:

https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/48153893-new-acrobat-wish-list-for-a-better-interface

Add your "wishes."

And don't forget to click the VOTE button in the upper left.

—Bevi Chagnon

One of the original Acrobat trainers since the original beta version 30+ years ago.

This is not my first time encountering a new Acrobat interface.

And no, I don't work for Adobe.

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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