Stop converting word to pdf

Dear Adobe Support,

For the past three months, I’ve been experiencing an ongoing issue that is interfering with my workflow. Every time I create or open a Word document, it automatically converts to a PDF without me requesting it.

Here’s what happens:

• I open or save a Word file (.docx), and instead of staying as a Word document, it immediately starts converting to a PDF.

• Once it becomes a PDF, opening it takes 10 seconds or longer, with pop-ups like “Creating Adobe PDF” and “Please wait, reading Adobe PDF” (see attached screenshots).

• I can no longer edit the document in Word unless I manually close it, reopen it in Word, and let it re-convert from PDF back to Word. This was never the case before.

This is frustrating and inefficient. I used to be able to open, edit, and save Word documents normally. PDFs were only created when I chose to export or save as PDF. Now it seems like Adobe is forcing the PDF format on every Word file I touch.

What I would like:

• Stop Word documents from automatically converting to PDF.

• Restore the original behavior where I can use Word freely and only create PDFs when I intentionally choose to.

Please let me know how to disable this automatic conversion. I suspect a setting may have changed or an Adobe integration is overriding my default file behavior, but I haven’t made any changes myself.

Thank you,