Showing PDF the way I last viewed it

[ediener]

Is there any way I can get a PDF to show the way I last viewed it ?

This means:

1) The same zoom level.

2) The same page.

3) The same navigation panes

4) The same bookmarks expanded in the same way.

5) The same show/hide settings.

Is it really too hard to store this information somewhere ( databases anyone ? ) for each PDF document I open ?

This is baby programming. I would even pay for a version of the reader which did this. Instead every time I open a PDF document everything is set to some predetermined beginning and I must change everything once again the way I need it in order to view the document.

Why oh why, Adobe, is this so hard to provide for users of Adobe reader ?

[try67 · Accepted solution]

Go to Edit - Preferences - Documents and tick "Restore last view settings when reopening documents".

[ediener]

Thanks ! I did as you suggested and the result is:

1) The same zoom level is restored.

2) The same page is restored..

3) The same navigation panes are restored.

4) The same bookmarks are NOT restored but get completely expanded once again.

5) The same Show/Hide settings are restored once I also checked the option "Remember current state of Tools pane"..

This is much better. But why Adobe reader must completely expand all bookmarks each and every time I do not understand. In a document with a great number of bookmarks this is poor behavior. I could not find a setting to correct this. Does one exist ?

[try67]

I'm not sure what you mean regarding the bookmarks panel being "fully extended"... Could you clarify?

[ediener]

If I have a document open with the bookmarks navigation pane showing, I will often have the bookmarks expanded to show the document page which I am viewing. I may have other bookmarks expanded or contracted to see the various bookmark chapters and topics.

If I then close the document, when I reopen it I want to see the expanded and contracted bookmarks showing in the same way as when I last had opened the document. Furthermore I want to see the bookmark highlighted which corresponds to the page of the document I was last viewing and which is showing again when I have reopened the document.

Why is this important ? Bookmarks are a way of seeing the structure of a document and finding things in that document based on its structure. It is equivalent, in its way, of opening a chapter of a book dealing with some topic of interest in that book without having to search every page of that book to find what one is looking for. Some PDF documents have a huge number of documents and topics. Expanding every chapter and topic of a document every time that documented is opened actually makes it much harder to find information than just expanding/contracting what the user wants to see, Surely the Adobe Acrobat Reader can expand/contract what was expanded and contracted when the end-user last viewed that document when he close it. This would make it much easier for the end-user to get back to viewing the document as he did before. The current functionality of expanded every chapter/topic by rote is detrimental to achieving that for the end-user.

[try67]

You can save the open/close state of the bookmarks if you make an edit of any kind to the file and then save it. This could be something small like adding a comment of some kind and then deleting it, so the file is basically the same, but it is considered "edited" (or "dirty", to use the technical term).

You can't save the currently highlighted bookmark, as far as I know.

[ediener]

This is Adobe Acrobat Reader. I am viewing documents, not editing them.

[~graffiti]

ediener  wrote

This is Adobe Acrobat Reader. I am viewing documents, not editing them.

Yes but you can use the "comment" tool as suggested above. That is one way that Reader "edits" documents.

[ediener]

Why should a user have to do some artificial thing just to get Adobe Acrobat Reader to restore the bookmarks correctly ?

[try67]

It's just a quirk of how the application works. It's possible to save the state of bookmarks but they don't "dirty" the file just by opening and closing them. Anyway, It works and solves your problem...

[ediener]

It is a solution, but a very poor one. Since the code is there to save the state of the bookmarks correctly Adobe Acrobat Reader should, at the very least, provide an option to do so automatically, whether someone "edits" the corresponding document or not. There is no logical correlation between the state of the bookmarks being saved and the "editing" of a document; therefore there should be no programmatic correlation between these two different functionalities. Clearly I might wish to save the state of the bookmarks of a document whether I "edit" the document or not.

[try67]

You might, but others might find it annoying that each time they open a bookmark to click it the application would consider that they edited the file and ask them to save it when closing it. I guess Adobe thought the latter is a more reasonable approach so they implemented it like that. On top of that, Reader is not capable of editing the bookmarks structure at all, so there could be a technical issue there as well.

At any rate there's nothing you or I can do about it. Just be happy there is a way for you to achieve what you wanted... I believe the methods I described answer all your original 5 points.

[ediener]

Why would viewing/expanding/contracting/opening a bookmark ever mean that the document was edited ?

The stupidity of tying the editing of a file to opening bookmarks, or wanting to save the current state of the expanded/contracted bookmark tree, is beyond a reasonable human brain to comprehend. How many times can I say in this thread that saving/restoring the current state of the bookmarks should be entirely independent of anything else one does when viewing a document. How hard can it really be to implement this basic behavior since it is already being done when you "edit" a document ?

[Bernd Alheit]

You can post a feature request:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[ediener]

Thanks, I will do that.

[try67]

Exactly. And if the document is not edited then there's no reason to save it... Anyway, this discussion is futile and has run its course.

[ediener]

What has saving the state of the bookmarks to do with saving an edited document ? For that matter what has saving the document page in which I last viewed a document, so that opening the document again brings me to the document page I was last viewing ( something which Acrobat Reader currently does when I check the correct option ), have to do with saving an edited document ?

But you are right. Enough !  Trying to reason with those who want to support the current functionality of any piece of software, no matter how illogical it is, simply because "that's how it works" is futile. I will post a suggestion using the proper channels and hopefully some programmer at Adobe, who is responsible for how the Acrobat Reader works, will see it and improve the functionality.

[MOONJOON25958842kkmy]

SOLUTION to not open on the LAST VIEWED PAGE (issue on PDF file format itself) 
(1) Edit -> Preferences -> Documents -> "Restore last view settings when reopening documents".
(2) Let Acrobat Reader save the PDF file under a different name. This new PDF file is built on Adobe's architecture. This new file will open on the last page you viewed.