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Participant
April 16, 2010
Answered

Content preparation progress... again!

  • April 16, 2010
  • 8 replies
  • 27446 views

When I create a new PDF I must wait when a pop up window occurs "content preparation progress" for it to complete whatever it is doing. I recall that this annoying waste of time used to happen in a previous version of Acrobat.

I am now using Acrobat 9.3.2 and this annoying pop up just started happening yesterday. Perhaps the Adobe updater installed an update which has caused this "problem" to reoccur.

Does anyone know how to get rid of this "feature" in this version of Acrobat?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer

    Have you tried this fix? it worked for me runinng latest version of 9 pro

    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/328/328995.html

    8 replies

    Participant
    March 1, 2011

    In answer to your question, and dispite the fact that some people have developed workarounds that seem to work sometimes on some machines, the overall answer is -- "No" -- and, more maddenly, Adobe doesn't seem to care. (I know, I know, that's hard to believe for an Apple-oriented company, but there it is.)

    I now have 10, and am pulling my hair out over this "content preparation" issue. I have to read many, many large PDFs in the course of a day, and I lose a huge amount of time waiting while the document is analysed. This problem has been around for a number of iterations of Acrobat (since at least, I believe, 8). The various work arounds that are rolling around on the net (such as renaming plug-ins and the like) have not worked for me--and in any event, the fact that the work-arounds involve gutting the program raises further issues such as--does Adobe even care?

    Adobe's standard response (when it makes one) is: turn off accessibility in other programs. This of course begs the the following question--If I can turn it off in other programs, why can't I turn it off in Acrobat? Acrobat usually doesn't bother to answer THAT question, or it hides behind some reference to US laws regarding accessibilty, thereby suggesting that the non-disabled users (that is, those that don't need to use the "accessibility" feature) are unfeeling ingrates.

    The other problem with Adobe's non-response of course is that it doesn't tell you how to turn it off in the "other" programs. I suspect it would say "well, we can't be expected to provide support for other programs." Fair enough, but IF Adobe DOES know how to turn accessibility off in other programs why doesn't it simply tell us? I suspect it's because (a) it doesn't actually know how, or (b) it knows that its suggestion is not in fact accurate.

    In the end then we're left with a mystery. Why did Adobe introduced a "feature" without at the same time introducing a way to turn it off? It can't be that it's software programmers don't know how--is it?

    Correct answer
    December 13, 2010

    Have you tried this fix? it worked for me runinng latest version of 9 pro

    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/328/328995.html

    Participating Frequently
    January 2, 2011

    The problem with this "fix" is that it slows down scrolling through a document.

    Adobe need to come up with a facility to TURN THIS ANNOYING "FEATURE" OFF!

    Participant
    October 6, 2010

    Delete the Accessbility plugins from your Reader and Acrobat folders.

    instructions are here for how to do it for Reader.

    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/remove-please-wait-while-the-document-is-being-prepared-for-reading-message-in-adobe-reader-8/

    Participant
    August 9, 2010

    This just started happening to me last week. I am on 9.3.3. I have tried the reading preferences with no luck. Has anyone found an answer yet. This is definitely annoying.

    Participant
    July 4, 2010

    I have Acrobat 9 and I have the same problem. I've checked all the forums and have not found a solution that works (at least not in 9). As well, I note that (a) this problem seems to have plagued earlier versions of Acrobat as well and (b) Adobe seems not to give a damn. As far as the latter point is concerned, if Adobe DID care it would fix this problem, (a) by posting a workaround or solution, and (b) by making it possible to change the stupid "feature" so that it didn't rob us all of our valuable time (and crash our computers). What is it with these "guys"? Adobe! Read the forums! Adobe! Fix the problem or tell us how to fix it!

    Inspiring
    July 5, 2010

    As I recall, the solution seemed to be related to turning off the accessibility functionality in your preferences. I might be remembering it wrong, but in the meantime it might be worth a try.

    Participant
    July 5, 2010

    Well, the troulbe is that in 9 there is no readily apparent way to "turn off" accessibilty. There is certainly a tab for that, and for "reader," etc,  but nothing that suggests you can turn anything off. I've "unselected" everything I can think of and will see if that works.

    May 26, 2010

    I'm having the same problem too.  Even with single PDFs the accessibility feature is a huge time waster, but the crashes when opening mutliple PDFs at once is a huge bug. Has anyone actually reported this as a bug to adobe?  The accessibility feature is nice, but it should be something you can toggle on and off (and should be off by default). I would assume that most users of Acrobat Pro are not visually challenged.  Acrobat Reader might be a different matter, but this option really gets in the way of productivity.  It takes too long to prepare the document, and if you just need to quickly view a lot of PDFs it's detrimental to a productive workflow.

    Participant
    April 21, 2010

    This is also my biggest problem with Acrobat 9. Reading other content on the forum, it appears that you cannot turn off this behavior. Under Edit>Preferences>Reading, you can force Acrobat to read only the current page, no less. Apparently this behavior is triggered by the use of some screen reading software or reading assistant under Control Pannel (however, I only thing I have ever installed is a Wacom tablet, no speech related stuff).

    I have acrobat 9.3.1 and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bits.

    Inspiring
    April 17, 2010

    Have not seen the popup as I recall. However, if it is a result of the autoupdate, that is reasonable since I always turn off the autoupdater up front (see the Edit>Preferences). I always download my updates from Adobe.