Participant

Answered

Disable "Bookmarks" Side Panel whenever opening a PDF

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 31, 2024
11 replies
18174 views

I would like the "Bookmarks" panel to NOT open when I first open an Adobe PDF. How do I accomplish this?

PDF

Correct answer Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Your preference setting will affect documents that have their settings at default.

If the PDF is set to open the bookmarks pane, it will open. As long as the document does not have password protection, you can close the panel, change the Document Properties, and save the PDF. You should you be able to set up an action for this if you deal with a lot of PDFs.

If you have control over the PDF settings in the original program, turn off the option to make bookmarks or at least, not to open the pane by default.

chloe.g

Participant

Adjusting default view settings only has an effect on the “All tools” pane. It has no effect on the Bookmark pane, which always opens if a document has bookmarks. But I don’t care if a document has bookmarks. I DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM! You can’t even just shrink it down because it doesn’t even store the splitter distance. It also doesn’t make sense to store the bookmark pane setting in the document itself. A lot of academic literature contains a comprehensive bookmark list, but we can’t be opening and saving every document. That method doesn’t even work by the way, but even if it did, it wouldn’t be considered a solution.

When someone answers my question with "How long is a piece of string?", I throw a null reference exception.

matqwertygl

Participant

This is beyond a joke, I must open over 100 PDF documents a day, if not three times and every time I close the bookmark. ADOBE, we pay for this software fix the f@£$$£ ISSUE!

sefgvdrgrg

Participant

ADOBE! REACT NOW !!!

This issue has been reported repeatedly and is wasting your user’s a lot of time. How can this easy fix take so long?

I wont wait any longer and use/recommend alternatives to Adobe. This is ridiculous.

ranv09

Participant

Super-annoying when trying to review multiple pdfs. Maybe Adobe can ask AI to write some code to fix this very annoying problem.

Userguynameplace

Participant

How does Adobe allow a bug like this to exist? In Foxit I was able to disable bookmarks with a few clicks of the mouse.

U

ulf_1293

Participant

This issue has caused me to stop using Acrobat Reader on my macs

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Correct answer

Community Expert

Your preference setting will affect documents that have their settings at default.

If the PDF is set to open the bookmarks pane, it will open. As long as the document does not have password protection, you can close the panel, change the Document Properties, and save the PDF. You should you be able to set up an action for this if you deal with a lot of PDFs.

If you have control over the PDF settings in the original program, turn off the option to make bookmarks or at least, not to open the pane by default.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

L

lilbitx_9544

Participant

I can’t fill the forms out

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

I can’t fill the forms out
By @lilbitx_9544

Is this post even connected to the original problem of disabling the bookmarks pane?

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

V

VladNJ

Participating Frequently

As requested by Tariq, I am attaching a screenshot of the Bookmarks example and the About (to show you the Reader

Your operating system ==> Windows 10 Pro
Does this happen with all PDFs or only specific ones? ==> Most of them

version)

T

thanay_1780

Participant

Hi,

Any update on this, I spend half of my day on this only to realize it cannot be done.

Regars,

Thanay

T

Tariq Dar

Legend

Hi, @thanay_1780 - currently, there are no updates.
I have reported this issue to our product engineering team as a bug. However, Acrobat is, by design, built to open the Bookmarks panel if it is set to open the panel in file properties > Initial view settings.

Also, I have considered @VladNJ and @Gregg36436373lk5u's comments that even if they close the Panel, it will still launch next time, considering "Restore last view settings when reopening documents" is in place. This preference will be overridden if the document "Initial view" is set to launch the Bookmarks panel.

Could you shed some light on whether your documents have "Initial View" set to launch the Bookmarks panel?

To know more about the Initial view, please visit this page: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/viewing-pdfs-viewing-preferences.html

Thank you for your patience and support

V

VladNJ

Participating Frequently

I appreciate your suggestions @BarlaeDC @Tariq Ahmad but this inquiry is to disable Bookmark window from appering for all documents and not just one specific document.

R

rumah indah

Participant

I agree with VladNJ - the bookmarks panel should dispay by option, not by default. When the bookmarks displays the document displays smaller. I'm in the design trade, when I open a PDF I wan to see the document, not an unused navigation panel.

And why no spell check on this page 🙂 ?

T

Tariq Dar

Legend

Hi @rumah indah

We hear you—having the Bookmarks panel open automatically when you don’t need it can be frustrating. Thanks for bringing this up!

To better understand this experience issue, could you share more details about your setup? Specifically:

Which version of Acrobat (or Reader) are you using? (e.g., Acrobat Pro/Standard, Reader, and the exact version number)
Your operating system (Windows/macOS and version)
Does this happen with all PDFs or only specific ones?
If possible, please record your screen while trying to reproduce the issue upload the recording to any Cloud drive, and share the link with us.

Your input will help us investigate this more thoroughly. We appreciate your patience, and we’ll keep you posted with any updates!

Best,
Tariq

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Nasib36431047rban

Participant

1. open one pdf document
2. View>show/hide>Tool pane
3. click "restart" application

V

VladNJ

Participating Frequently

This recommendation does not turn it off permanently, but only for that instance (might as well click on the x box)

T

Tariq Dar

Legend

Hi @VladNJ,

Thank you for reaching out with your question.
Sadly, it can be turned off permanently. This panel is driven by app preference and document property.

Here is the app preference you may want to check:

Launch Acrobat
Go to Preferences> Documents. Keyboard shortcut (Cmd + K) Mac and (Ctrl+K) Wins.
Select "Restore last view settings when reopening documents"
Click "OK"
Open a PDF file.
Close the bookmarks panel.
Save and close the PDF file.
The next time you open the same document you should have the bookmarks panel closed

Let us know if you have further questions.

~Tariq

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