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New Participant
January 13, 2020
Question

Saving edited PDF attached to Outlook email composition

  • January 13, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 7957 views

I am composing an email message in Outlook 365 where I attach a PDF, then make some edits in Acrobat. In previous versions of Acrobat (XI, specifically), Ctrl+S or the Save function would save the edited PDF to the email message that was being composed. Since I opened the file from the email composition, it makes sense that Acrobat would save it back to the same location without questioning my request.

 

In Acrobat DC, however, the Save function (and Ctrl+S) brings up the "Save As" file prompt, defaulting to the temporary Outlook content folder where the file was being stored by Windows. This is ridiculous and does not match previous version behavior. I need to save my edits back to the email that I was composing. Is there a setting in Acrobat that is inadvertently causing this behavior?

 

My current successful workaround is that if I do not click "Save", and simply exit Acrobat, the "save changes?" prompt will successfully save my edits to the PDF attachment in the email I am composing. So it appears to be a fixable problem.

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4 replies

New Participant
March 24, 2023

Thank you, this works great.  I was equally frustrated when the ability to edit attachments was changed.  When I annotate attached documents for review I don't want to revise the original nor pollute our repositories with markups.  Now that Adobe knows there is a workaround, my fear it that a developer at Adobe will treat this undocumented feature as a bug and "fix" it!

New Participant
February 15, 2023

I am sorry, but I am not seeing the solution to this issue. Please advise.

 

New Participant
February 18, 2023

Assumptions

You receive an email with a PDF attachment.

You want to modify the attachment before sending back to the person or to a different person.

Solution

1. Click forward on the original email (so that the PDF is attached to a new email).

2. Open the PDF in the new email.

3. Edit the PDF.

4. Close Adobe Acrobat WITHOUT clicking Save.

5. Adobe will ask if you want to Save the changes made to the PDF.

6. Click Yes.

7. Adobe will save the changes to the PDF attached to the email. 

New Participant
February 21, 2023

Thanks for the updated steps. Extremely helpful.

New Participant
August 29, 2022

@beno10440768 Thank you for this tip!  You also were able to articulate this problem quite well.  I couldn't even figure out how to search for a solution to this, I just knew it used to work, and now it didn't.  Agree with @Charismatic_Flamingo6C15 , this is a huge time suck if you need to edit attached docs and have to save them and reattach.  Thanks again, hopefully there will be an official fix.

New Participant
August 30, 2022

@ricardorico and @Charismatic_Flamingo6C15 happy to help! This has become such a "norm" for me over the past few years that I forgot it was ever an issue. I still miss Acrobat XI however, as all the account-related links at the top right really crowd my workspace even when reduced to their absolute minimum. #NewerIsGenerallyWorse

New Participant
December 5, 2024

I still have my original Acrobat XI Standard, worked great but my computer was not doing so well.  Then I had to upgrade my computer but couldn't find a way to transfer that program and had to sign up for these stupid subscriptions that has all the bells and whistles at the same time making it so much more difficult than it should be.  I don't need the AI Assistant, I just want to edit my pdfs and move on with life.  LOL  Wish there is a way to get the original program moved to my new computer.

New Participant
March 2, 2022

beno10440768:

You are AWESOME!!  This absolutely works and is an incredible solution!!!

I have been so frustrated in my move from Acrobat XI to Acrobat DC due to the issue of saving edited PDFs already attached to an email!  Being forced to "Save As" to my computer and then reattaching under Acrobat DC is so time-consuming when you have to do it all the time.  I was missing Acrobt XI. . .until now! 

Thank you so much!