Deleting Adobe Reader app in iOS also deletes PDFs

[iamjurr]

Question,

Does deleting the adobe reader app in iOS (either purposely or accidentally) also remove any pdfs you may have downloaded to an iPad's Files app? If so, is there a way to prevent that from happening?

I ask because it appears that a user had her PDFs deleted when a change was made in our MDM that caused Adobe Reader to be uninstalled and then reinstalled.

[MobileDeveloperCK · Accepted solution]

Hi iamjurr​,

Thank you for the inquiry.

In general, if you uninstall or delete any iOS app (not just Acrobat), the operating system (iOS) will delete all of app data (including your local documents, preferences, etc.) associated with the app. That's the expected behavior for iOS.  It's not a unique problem to Acrobat.

Apple's Files app will let you browse the local documents that are stored in Acrobat on your iPad/iPhone.

1. Launch the Files app.
2. Tap Browse in the bottom tab bar.
3. Go to Locations > On My iPad / On My iPhone.
4. Open the Acrobat folder.

The Acrobat folder contents in the Files app are equivalent of Files > Locations > On This iPad / On This iPhone in the Acrobat app. 

If you uninstall Acrobat, your local documents and folders would disappear from both apps.

Any documents stored in cloud storage locations (e.g. Adobe Document Cloud, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.) will remain intact even after Acrobat is uninstalled.

To prevent accidental data loss on your iPad/iPhone, we'd highly recommend the following:

• Update Acrobat to a new version instead of uninstalling and reinstalling it.
• Back up your entire device using iCloud or iTunes regularly.

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

Alternatively, you can make backup copies of your Acrobat local documents only.

How to back up and restore PDF documents on iPad/iPhone using iTunes

Hope this helps.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

[Sean5CF2]

MobileDeveloperCK -- no, this is adobe behavior; it is not always expected behavior for any operating system to also remove the files *unless* the file types are exclusively associated with the program being deleted. Try deleting Excel from an iPad - files are still there. Adobe has always been fairly draconian with their pdf format licensing, and now it's a problem (again).

[Bernd Alheit]

Excel doesn't save the files in the app.

[Test Screen Name]

" it is not always expected behavior for any operating system to also remove the files *unless* the file types are exclusively associated with the program being deleted." Yes, in any reasonable OS, but not in iOS. You don't seem to know iOS very well. It is absolutely the standard, expected and REQUIRED behaviour of ALL iOS apps. iOS isn't like Windows or Mac. There is NOWHERE for an app to put files on the device except inside the app. FILES isn't a place to keep files, it's a view of the files offered by installed apps. So, you remove an app, you lose the files. Always. Gone. The exception of course is if the files are not in the app, but somewhere OUTSIDE the device, typically in the cloud. For this reason many apps don't store locally at all. For this reason, many apps have automatic iCloud loading to the cloud. But no app can overcome this limitation, it's absolutely wrong to say Adobe have a choice of whether to keep files you stored on the device.

" Adobe has always been fairly draconian with their pdf format licensing" What weird nonsense is this? 25 years ago Adobe gave the PDF format away, absolutely free, to the world. There is no such thing as PDF format licensing.