Adobe Reader DC.
I had the buttons at the top about OK until todays update. Very irritating that an update loses all the main settings. Anyway:
1. So I do View - Show/Hide - Toolbar Items - Show Select & Zoom Tools
I get a popout menu that appears to offer the opportunity to select individual items e.g.Fit Width. It also offers an item Show All Select & Zoom Tools. This is the one I actually want. But clicking this, or any individual item has no effect. The item does not subsequently appear as checked in that popout menu, and no controls appear on the toolbar at the top.
I do have File tools, Page Display tools and Page Navigation tools showing on the toolbar - and they do appear checked in their popout menu within Show/Hide - Toolbar Items.
It's possible there isn't enough room, though this was never a problem in the past - very old versions in the good old days a long time ago would expand to 2 lines, more recently I think there was a button that showed further buttons.
This is hopeless - every pdf I read requires some adjustment to zoom, and going in and out of the layers of dropdown menus to be able to read a pdf is ridiculous.
2. Separate issue I think, but it wasn't like this before todays update:
Changing menu settings are not retained after closing Adobe Reader DC. Particularly, every time it opens it shows the useless task pane on the right. I can go into View - Show/Hide - Tools Pane. This reduces the width of it but won't get rid of it, which until today I was able to do. And if I close Reader and reopen it then it's back at full width.
I have done Edit - Preferences, Documents tab:
I have checked 'Restore last view settings when reopening documents' - I'm not sure exactly what this does, but it doesn't stop the damn right-hand tools pane.
I have checked 'Remember current state of tools pane' but if I close and reopen Reader DC the right-hand tools pane is still there, full width.
I assume some genius at Adobe thinks that it really ought to be important to me to 'send for signature' or the other rubbish, but I don't do any of that, I just read pdf's. Anyway, is it no longer possible to avoid this clutter since the last update?
3. My guess is that Adobe want my life to be miserable and won't relent. Is there a way I can uninstall and then install the last non-updated version of Reader DC?
I would then turn off updates. This is something I remember I had to do with Reader 9 about 8 years ago, I think similarly to ensure that the buttons that enable reading were readily to hand. It worked then, other than the relentless constant nag from Adobe to update. But after a windows reinstall I could no longer get Reader 9, and it turned out that Reader DC allowed showing the key buttons for navigation, zoom, number of pages to display etc, so it was alright - but now it isn't.
There are pages on the site that supposedly tell you how to do that - but it just leads to an install page with only one version, the current one.
4. I would certainly never pay Adobe for a pdf reader of this Byzantine unhelpfulness, but I might pay someone else for something simple that works. Would anybody recommend a pdf reader that allows the simple stuff, like moving from page-to-page, zooming to width, viewing in 2-page or 1-page mode without fuss?
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