New Participant

Answered

Acrobat always asks to save changes, even with no changes

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 9, 2018
8 replies
63761 views

Recently Acrobat DC has started asking about saving changes before closing upon opening every single PDF document. No changes have been made ever, yet it still asks and forces me to answer to get out of the document.

I have read other articles that mentioned possibly corrupt PDF documents, but I don't think that is relevant as it happens on every document. I have even created new PDFs from blank Word documents. This also happens with others in my organization.

Any ideas on how to get rid of this very annoying, unnecessary, and time-wasting prompt?

General troubleshooting

Correct answer Karl Heinz Kremer

If this truly is happening with all PDF files, regardless of their source, then something in your Acrobat installation is modifying these files. This can for example be a plug-in. Do you have any 3rd party plug-ins installed? If you don't know, or if there are 3rd party plug-ins, I would bring up Acrobat without these plug-ins to see if that changes this behavior. You can disable all 3rd party plug-ins by opening Acrobat's Preferences, then go to the "General" category and check the box "Use only certified plug-ins" - only plug-ins that come with Acrobat are certified, so this will disable all 3rd party plug-ins. After you make this change and restart Acrobat, do you still see the save prompt?

A

Angie 1219

New Participant

Disabling the plugin worked, but I need the plugin so I perfomed Repair Installation after reenabling the plugin and the issue appears to be resolved for the time being!

A

Angie 1219

New Participant

Well that fix didn't last long 😞

I need the plug in so I guess I'm stuck with the problem..

S_S

Community Manager

Hi @Angie 1219,

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for writing in!

If you are sure about the faulty plugin that causes the issue with Acrobat, I would suggest reaching out to the manufacturer of the plugin and let them know of the situation.

In most cases, they would be able to provide you with an upgraded version which would be better compatible with the latest versions of Acrobat.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Souvik.

A

Aaron311956062tng

New Participant

Repair Installation worked for me. Had to restart my computer afterwards but then it worked.

Good luck!

J

jrsousa2

Participating Frequently

I saw one answer in the Stack Exchange sites that is from way back in 2012 (and was hopeful that it would be the silver bullet, but the answerer himself acknolwedges that it's all that he could think of). It's unbelievable that these people still didn't fix this garbage since 2012. I am very angry and annoyed about this. This type of thing just makes us want to minimize Adobe files usage (if not run away from it entirely). This is very poor software development practices.

M

Matt29196861sw02

New Participant

Hi, in print dialoge untick 'save toner', seemed to work for me.

J

jrsousa2

Participating Frequently

None of the answers here was useful for me. None worked. It's not about repairing the program. The allegation that the file is being modified behind the scenes by some plugin (in Reader???) also doesn't make any sense at all. If the Reader or a plug-in is modifying the file without the user being aware of it, then it's up to them to save the file, not the user.

This save prompt is a huge no-no, it's annoying, it's anti-productive, it's non-sensical, it's frustrating, even more in Reader, which is supposed to only display the file, not change them. If somebody finds the fix for this, without it being another false lead, please let me know. There are many users here chanting victory too soon, before the thing is actually proven to work, which is misleading newly arrived users like me (I thought I had found the answer, only to be disappointed after reading more).

D

default6agklue60s4i

New Participant

Adobe software has always been annoying, user unfriendly, nonsensical etc. In my opinion. I have never liked Adobe. But Adobe PDF is so standard you can´t be without it. I also have the Save-problem when opening and closing do PDF files. It drives me crazy.

R

roger0231

New Participant

That's so true. Back in the days Adobe flash was ubiquitous on the web, just like pdf is today. The software was so buggy and insecure that an effort by web companies was made to build an alternative and kick Adobe flash out of the standard web. I wish the same thing would be done for pdfs.
This saving bug is a good exemple of the issue wih Adobe. It has happened to so many people for years, is extremely annoying, and could be fixed very easily and yet they do noting. At least they could allow the option to choose a default option for all files when closing multiple pdfs. But no, they won't even do that.

B

Brian25446766nl01

New Participant

Help/ Repair Installation worked for me.

O

O5F8F

New Participant

I tried all of the suggestions in this thread to no avail.

Then, I discovered the root of my specific case: Windows 10's "Save as PDF" choice in the print dialog. Upon opening and closing a file saved with that option, Acrobat XI would prompt me save changes. If you are an XI user, choosing to save with "Adobe PDF" may be your solution, too.

O

O5F8F

New Participant

A

Anonymous

Most annoying! None of these solutions worked. I just force quit. If someone has a better solution,please post.

D

davidw61436923

New Participant

User tleetabor's idea fixed my issue. I went to Help> Repair Acrobat Installation. After computer restart, was no longer and issue.

A

Anonymous

I don’t see that option in Help. Is that in Acrobat?

Sent from my iPad

Karl Heinz KremerCorrect answer

Community Expert

If this truly is happening with all PDF files, regardless of their source, then something in your Acrobat installation is modifying these files. This can for example be a plug-in. Do you have any 3rd party plug-ins installed? If you don't know, or if there are 3rd party plug-ins, I would bring up Acrobat without these plug-ins to see if that changes this behavior. You can disable all 3rd party plug-ins by opening Acrobat's Preferences, then go to the "General" category and check the box "Use only certified plug-ins" - only plug-ins that come with Acrobat are certified, so this will disable all 3rd party plug-ins. After you make this change and restart Acrobat, do you still see the save prompt?

S

steves23210816Author

New Participant

YOU ARE THE MAN! That was it.

I believe I know which plug-in it is, but I wanted a way to be sure. I clicked on Tools and compared the icons showing before and after the certified checkbox. Only one icon is missing, and it was the plug-in I suspected. I assume that pretty much narrows it down, or is there a more definitive way to check and see what plug-ins I have in my installation?

S

steves23210816Author

New Participant

Disregard, turns out the culprit realized it very recently and are working on a fix. Thanks!

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded