Possible to disable SharePoint check-in/out prompt without disabling all SharePoint integration

[Guest]

Hello,

While the article "What's New in Acrobat X, Version 10.1" (http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfitmatters/2011/06/whats-new-in-acrobat-x-version-10-1.html) claims as a new feature the ability to disable the SharePoint check-in/check-out prompt, I cannot find any options for this in the Acrobat X 10.1 application, and furthermore, in response to a user question on this topic, instructions are given to edit a registry key to disable the SharePoint integration features, as below:

     "Create a new key “cSharePoint” at “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\(product name)\(version)\FeatureLockDown”

     In this key, create a new DWORD Value “bDisableSharePointFeatures”

     Set its value to 1"

My question is: Is it possible to disable the SharePoint check-in/check-out prompt only, as suggested by the above article, without disabling all of the SharePoint integration features (as the registry edit would do)?

Many Thanks

[denisc96593184]

I'm sorry Adobe that is a totally uninformed response from @Sunil2201​​who clearly is not a SharePoint user.

If you are using SharePoint properly, you do NOT check files out.  All Microsoft Office apps now support co-authoring, and checking them out disables this important feature.

For that reason, NOBODY should be checking documents out/in of SharePoint, and anybody suggesting that users should be checking out documents needs to go back to the last decade where they came from, and that also goes for the applications that "support" SharePoint (i.e. Adobe Acrobat, which I love, but I hate the way it is totally broken with SharePoint).

[dileepj]

All these years and still this issue persists. Do note that Adobe prompts user even if the doc library has disabled check out, set versioning as "No Versioning". It also highlights the checkout option which tends to push the regular user to click on the checkout option.

If Adobe really wants to enable this feature, at bare minimum, try not to highlight the check out option to mislead the end user!!

[denisc96593184]

Recent revisions of Acrobat seem to have made Acrobat work better with SharePoint when Acrobat's SharePoint integration is disabled.  It's now a bit more useful without SharePoint integration enabled, and permits saving to SharePoint webdav paths without returning save failures all the time.

However one BIG problem that remains when SharePoint integration is disabled is that Acrobat clobbers PDF file versioning & custom metadata within SharePoint when saving. 

What it's doing when you save a PDF that's in SharePoint is saving to a temporary file (e.g. tempfile.tmp), and then once it's finished, it deletes the old file and then renames the temp file to the old file name. The new file loses all of the custom SharePoint metadata, and has a "0.1" (or 1.0" version) - losing all previous versions.

This is BAD behaviour and harkens back to the 1980s DOS days of file handling.

One way to get around this is using OneDrive - when Acrobat edits local copies of SharePoint files that are synced with OneDrive, then OneDrive handles that versioning properly, and will upload the new file as a next version, instead of deleting the old file, versions and metadata.  I've done this when I wanted to do a "recognise text" across a large collection of PDF files, but wanted to retain the original version in document history, rather than lose the original (along with retaining all of the important document metadata attached to each file).  Using OneDrive isn't a very good long-term / generic solution though - as it completely fails on complex libraries, and breaks many other things like co-authoring on Office files.

[DMcFadd]

Many users don't take issue with Acrobat Reader being integrated with SharePoint.  Many organizations use SharePoint; it's hardly the end-user's choice, and SharePoint is arguably superior to flat file network storage.  Microsoft products have faults, as do Adobe products; nobody is arguing that and it's hard to please everyone.  My longstanding complaint is the imposition of the dialog box itself.  While I do edit and comment using Reader and even Acrobat Pro, far and away my most common action is to simply read the information in existing PDF files.   When opening dozens of PDF documents over the course of a few hours' research, it is disrupting to be prompted with that annoying dialog box.  I say, just open the dang file so I can get my work done and stop pestering me with inane questions!  The original poster and many commenters merely ask that the dialog be suppressed.  That is the issue at hand:  the dialog box itself.

If the user wishes to check out and edit the document, he or she can do so in a twinkling from the File menu:  File > SharePoint > Check Out.  In Reader 2017, power users can type Alt+FIO and accomplish this.  Simple actions which don't interrupt the user's work, unlike pop-up dialogs.

[denisc96593184]

I agree fully.

Thankfully Adobe seems to have gradually been fixing all the things that are broken when SharePoint integration is turned off (such as being able to save a file to a WebDAV URL), so turning off Acrobat's SharePoint integration is the best way to stop these annoying dialogs.

Unfortunately it seems that the new version of Acrobat is now annoying for new reasons, in that it keeps popping up advertisements and pestering you to convert more files while you are not using it ... F* off Adobe, what possessed you to think that advertising your program's features to me in pop-ups was acceptable behaviour, dammit... oh, you took your queues from windows? dammit microsoft... so now we need popup blockers for apps?

[AaronQ]

Just throwing my 2019 hat in on this one. The above 7 years’ worth of commentary echo my issues and diminishing optimism throughout our 2018 Teams/SPO implementation relating to Adobe. Chiefly, thank you to all the admins that have been vocal for so long about the subject bug.

To DMcFadd's point, the user is prompted for checkout/in when they save an unchecked document. So, the user can sleepwalk in to saving properly without even venturing into the File menu. This double prompt is in addition to a forced [Title] meta-data prompt.

"How many clicks does it take to save to the cloud" is an office meme with our Adobe users.

What's worse is how well office apps function with Teams/SPO by comparison. I can understand that from most stake holder viewpoints this all sounds trivial. But for the folks responsible for producing the stream of docs management wants to rapidly approve, using Adobe Sign integration; it is relatively arduous.

[shaunh69052982]

I just want to throw my troubles in here as well. Trying to open an PDF directly from SharePoint, it opens just fine. However, when the same SharePoint library is viewed using file explorer and I attempt to open a PDF, that is when I'm prompted if I wish to OPEN, CheckOUT and OPEN, or CLOSE.

[NicoleAhmed]

2022 - acrobat reader DC - I have mapped my sharepoint libraries as drives so am happy to turn off sharepoint features completely in reader (but note denisc96593184 point about versioning and loss of metadata)

I did not want the check out & open dialogue for sharepoint pdfs on a work computer. On a corporate laptop I can only edit registry in HKEY CURRRENT USER - but the following settings have appeared to work for me. Of note this disables sharepoint integration completely (so I no longer have sharepoint in "other file storage" in Home - but this doesn't matter to me as I have mapped my sharepoint & one drive for business as network drives):

1. Open the registry.

2. Go to HKCU\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\(product)\(version)\FeatureLockDown

3. Create a DWORD value called bDisableSharePointFeatures. Set its value to 1.

4. Create a key called cSharePoint.

5. Create a DWORD value called bDisableSharePointFeatures. Set its value to 1.

These registry settings are for Acrobat reader DC - you may have to change product and version to suit your setup

Save following text  as a .reg file in notepad - click and run to add these registry chagnes:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown]

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cSharePoint]

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001

If you have admin rights you can also add the following

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown]

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cSharePoint]

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001