Documents\*.pdf missing from Ports list in Adobe PDF Printer Properties

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 28, 2022
4 replies
20149 views

Hello,

I have uninstalled Adobe and ran the Acro Cleaner tool as well and reinstalled Adobe Acrobat DC Pro with the latest update and I am still not able to restore the Document\*.pdf port for the Adobe PDF printer. The printer gets installed but defaults to the COM1 port in the printer properties. We are a subscriber paying for this product and have contacted Adobe support multiple times and it seems to be useless. Does anyone know a good fix for this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

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Darius261557116nj5

Participant

Has anyone found a solution for this?

The original Adobe Acrobat DC install works fine. As soon as its patched or updated the "Documents\*.pdf" port gets removed and the Adobe "Printer" is assigned to a COM port as described in the original post. Reparing install does not work. The only thing that works is reinstalling the original without any patches or updates, bet we require an update in order for a certain redaction feature to work.

Users can still print to pdf, but they recieve an error and their file is never removed from the print queue until an adminstrator manually deletes the files in the print queue.

As a work around we use 'save as pdf' in Microsoft Office but users being users constantly ask about it.

I am using Remote Desktop on Server 2012. I have read that this is an issue on Server 2016 also.

seanperryman

Participant

I can confirm it is not an issue in Server 2016. However, if you must remain on Server 2012, installing the software and never updating it seems to work as well.

You can also set a script to automatically clear the print queue every night. That's what I did, and didn't seem to have any negative consequences. Sometimes people would complain that there were "documents stuck in the queue", but I would just tell them to ignore that if they received the PDF they were printing (which they did in ALL cases).

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Darius261557116nj5

Participant

Thank you for your prompt response, Sean. We are upgrading to Server 2019 in the near future so hopefuly it wont be an issue with that OS version either.

I continued testing in the meantime and I think I found a fix. In the Adobe Printer properties, instead of using Com 4 as the port (which is what it gets set to as default when you patch / update Adobe) I set the port to "Null Port" . That seems to work. Looking through these posts again I noticed someone else posted this as a solution also. I will continue to test, if it fails at some point ill post an update.

I totally understand about the users complaining. Hahah. I know if we told the users a work around, or let them know to ignore any warning/error messages, they would still harass us to no end with questions and panic emails.

Thanks again

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seanperryman

Participant

TL;DR for my post: If you don't ever update the software past the initial installation, your Documents\*.PDF port will remain in place.

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Jeremy22980869arh3

Participant

I'm seeing the same issue on a Server 2012 terminal server using Adobe DC. This just started being an issue for our users.

The PDFs are created but the job stays in the queue and displays an error. The Document\*.pdf is missing completely and the printer is using COM1.

Repairing Adobe and doing a complete uninstall/reinstall did not result in any changes even thought the printer was added back.

Any help would be appreciated.

seanperryman

Participant

Came here to say exactly this. I never really cared before because the PDFs would be printed, and I'd just have to clear the queue every so often. I have also tried a repair and a complete remove/reboot/reinstall to no avail.

Acrobat 2020

Windows Serve 2012R2 Citrix/RDS

K

Kathleen24349103snem

Participant

Try this:

1. Go to Computer Management > Services. Find the Print Spooler service. Restart this service.
2. Go C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS in Windows Explorer. Delete all the files in this folder.
3. Go to Devices and Printers. Right‐click on Adobe PDF, go to Printer Properties. Go to the Ports tab. Change the port to nul: Click Apply.

Also, the normal installer does not work on our server. We've used the offline installer, found here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat‐dc‐downloads.html

Since doing this and disabling automatic updates this hasn't happened again. Good luck!

I have another printer that is set to nul and when I apply nul to Adobe PDF, it still is not working.