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Participating Frequently
March 29, 2023
Question

Acrobat Pro 32-bit very slow commenting ~1,500 page PDF

  • March 29, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 4026 views

We use Acrobat Pro 32-bit v2021.001.20093 on Windows 10 64-bit. (We must use 32-bit Acrobat due to a 32-bit plug-in we rely upon.)

 

We have a ~1,500 page PDF that is under 3MB. A user putting comments with the line tool complained of very slow response time. On a brand new Dell Optiplex PC, it takes about four seconds for the line to register as drawn and become highlighted. It also takes that long to delete a comment and to jump to a comment location. Nothing else can be done during this time. 

 

There are only 32 comments in this document. Upon opening it and clicking Comment on the side bar, it takes almost 30 seconds to allow commenting, during which the program shows "Not Responding".

 

We have tried this on multiple computers so it's not just one user. The document scrolls fine.

 

This is a very serious issue because we bill for our time, and it's slowing work to a crawl. I have seen similar issues from other users with no apparent solutions.

We have already tried a repair and re-optimizing the document.

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1 reply

Karl Heinz  Kremer
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 29, 2023

Does this also happen when you e.g. delete half of the pages in the document? If so, then the problem may not be with the documetn size, but the document itself. I don't think that 64 vs 32 bit will make much difference in how long such an operation would take (but if you have access to a computer on which you could install the 64bit version temporarly, it would be an interesting datapoint). Another thing to try is to disable all non Adobe plug-ins temporarily: You can do this by going into Acrobat's preferences, then select the "General" category and check the "Use only certified plug-ins" checkbox near the bottom of the page. Restart Acrobat and try the same test again. Does it run faster? If so, then your 3rd party plug-in would be to blame. 

Participating Frequently
March 29, 2023

Hi, if I delete half, the comment line takes almost two seconds. So it's definitely the document size.

Also with half pages gone, the former 30-second delay when first visiting Comment was down to a couple.

I had also tried running without the plug-ins, so no difference.

I don't have a 64-bit instance but I suppose I could install it on a test PC just to confirm it's not that.

Karl Heinz  Kremer
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 29, 2023

You are correct, that points to the document. If your original document contains too many incremental updates, that would slow things down. Doing a "File>Save As" (which is differetn from a normal Save operation), will consolidate all changes. If that does not speed things up, then unfortunately, you are stuck with what you've got. You could split the document into two parts, apply the comments and then merge it again, but if it's just four comments that need to be applied, then this would not save you any time.