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defaultdwvpve9f8ycp
Participant
October 30, 2023
Answered

Acrobat 23.0 is terrible

  • October 30, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 1417 views

I just want to pass along feedback that I hope will reach the team that authors Acrobat. The updates in 23.0 are terrible. A few things that have ruined my productivity:

• The new e-signature interface is confusing and hard to use. I used to be able to prep docs and send to clients in a few minutes and now it takes 4x longer because the tools are no longer intuitive. Please go back to something similar to how it was. 

• The view scale in a doc doesn't appear to work. If you have a document that has different size pages, you used to be able to easily have it display to fill the screen and now it just sits there and does nothing. 

• Since when do Adobe apps not have a toolbar at the top? You took away so much of the user interface that it now takes twice as long to edit and author a document as before. Please bring back the interface and stop hiding tools. This is counter-productive. Make things easier to find not harder. 

• Please follow other Adobe apps for UI/UX and stop making Acrobat an outlier. 

    Correct answer defaultdwvpve9f8ycp

    UPDATE: I initially went in and uninstalled this version of Acrobat intending to install an earlier version. When not finding earlier app versions, I got on tech support chat. The agent I eventually connected with was helpful. They informed me I should reinstall the new version and that there is a setting in one of the dropdowns to "DISABLE NEW ACROBAT INTERFACE". No clue this existed but glad it does. This solved much of what I was battling with. This might be a useful thing to introduce at first launch. I get that the dev. team would like to introduce the users to a new way of doing things but when our productivity depends on speed, familiarity, reliability and billable time, sweeping changes arne't always great. 

     

    SO, Go into Acrobat and look for the DISABLE NEW ACROBAT INTERFACE to fix things. Thank you tech support. Worth the wait in cue!

    5 replies

    T
    tom_cog
    Participating Frequently
    June 3, 2025

    I have lost all faith that Adobe actually gives an F about making their software better. 

    Adobe Acrobat - THE PDF handling application of note, by the INVENTORS of the PDF format - in the year of our lord 2025, using a souped up MacBook Pro with 12 CPU cores and 18 GPU and 128 GB of RAM, is the crappiest piece of sh*t software I have encountered in years. It's slow, it's laggy, it's clunky...the way it works is stupid, counterprodutive, illogical. It's UNREAL to me that this is the best Adobe is willing to put out there.

    And I don't think anyone at Adobe will read this, or any other complaints about it, and give a sh*t enough to actually devote resources to making the app better.

    UNREAL to me that Adobe is producing sh*t software like this.

    UNREAL.

     

    AnandSri
    Community Manager
    AnandSriCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    June 17, 2025

    Hello @tom_cog

     

    I hope you are doing well. I am really sorry for the trouble you had with the app and for the delayed response.

     

    Could you please share more details about the issue you are experiencing, like the workflow when you feel the app is slow or freezing? Are you on a Mac or Windows machine, and what is the version? 

     

    Please ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed on the machine: 25.001.20531 (Win) | 25.001.20529 (Mac), planned update June 10, 2025. Check for any pending updates from the Menu > help > check for updates, install the updates, restart the app and the machine, and try again.

    You may also reset the Acrobat's Preferences once and restart the machine to check the performance. For testing purposes, you can disable “Enable Protected Mode at startup” (under Menu > Preferences > Security) or turning off “Enable Enhanced Security”, and check. Please enable the security settings after the test.

     

    We're here to help, just need more info.

    Thanks,

    Anand Sri.

    garyc9322014
    garyc9322014
    Participating Frequently
    March 10, 2024

    Isn't it nice that I get to go back to the old interface? No. Because I STILL don't have scroll bars!!!!!!!!! This new interface is an abortion.

      T
      t1350
      Participating Frequently
      October 30, 2023

      I am not happy with it either. Of the four bullet points you mentioned I specificially agree that the third one has had a huge impact on my ability to produce work. The fourth point is also a very good one as well. 

       

      The most significant change that has completely blown up the work process I have to use is removal of the scroll bar when in 'view single/full page' mode. I have to check headers and footers from mulitple sources in 2000+ page documents and that scroll bar was the key to doing that successfully in a reasonable amount of time. I basically cannot check them now with paging through them individually which is super slow. I don't usually have the luxury of that much time to do it and it has had a huge impact on the work I produce daily. This really needs to be fixed.

       

      Thankfully, I also found the menu command to revert back to the previous interface. But this really needs to be fixed if they plan to force us to use the new version at some point. 

        D
        defaultdwvpve9f8ycpAuthorCorrect answer
        Participant
        October 30, 2023

        UPDATE: I initially went in and uninstalled this version of Acrobat intending to install an earlier version. When not finding earlier app versions, I got on tech support chat. The agent I eventually connected with was helpful. They informed me I should reinstall the new version and that there is a setting in one of the dropdowns to "DISABLE NEW ACROBAT INTERFACE". No clue this existed but glad it does. This solved much of what I was battling with. This might be a useful thing to introduce at first launch. I get that the dev. team would like to introduce the users to a new way of doing things but when our productivity depends on speed, familiarity, reliability and billable time, sweeping changes arne't always great. 

         

        SO, Go into Acrobat and look for the DISABLE NEW ACROBAT INTERFACE to fix things. Thank you tech support. Worth the wait in cue!

          T
          tiffani33260832l1qn
          Participant
          October 30, 2023

          How do I cancel my adobe acrobat account? I'm being charged every month and I don't use it. When trying to manage subscription, it just takes me in circles each time not allowing me to cancel. Contacted customer service and they said it was done in the play store and they couldn't help. The play store is not allowing me to cancel

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