Acrobat DC Pro crashes when comparing files

Report · Jan 23, 2016

I'm paying for Acrobat DC Pro; current version is 2015.010.20056. This is running Windows 10 Pro x64 on a Thinkpad Carbon X1 Touch PC. All software is kept up to date.

I just tried comparing 2 pdf's -- with and without only Text checked. The file was prepared from texlive and has multiple equations and a postscript figure -- none of which gives any problems on the 2 files separately. The files are about 225K each, with the figure being about 32K of that, which are really pdf inserts after development by texlive.

I've done a Repair and rebooted, but always get the same crash. I also killed an AdobeCollabSync.exe process which sometimes hangs Acrobat (please -- let us disable this nicely!?), but this had no effect.

The crash stops in the midst of the comparison -- just says it is has a problem. I turned to Nitropdf Pro and did the comparison. The downloaded compare file is about 1.2M. I regularly open files 10 times that size using Acrobat.

Report · Jan 25, 2016

Hi,

Create a new user account on Windows 10 with admin right, login to the new user account & now try to compare the documents using Acrobat DC. Check if it still crashes.

Regards,
Aadesh

Report · Jan 25, 2016

I do have Admin rights. I also tried opening Acrobat as "Run as administrator" with the same results/crash.

Lester

Report · Jan 25, 2016

Report · Jan 26, 2016

I tried Compare with several pairs of different pdf files. On one set, a precursor of the files of my current interest, I got an immediate prompt that the files were too "complex" and that I should try Scan mode instead of Report mode, which did work just fine.

Now alerted to this possibility, I then went back to the files of interest and that also worked just fine in Scan mode. I do not know why I did not get a "complex" initial warning.

I did all this while on the phone with tech support. I even sent my files of interest to a DIFFERENT PC with Acrobat DC Pro that has a DIFFERENT ACCOUNT (not me), so that my profile being corrupted was NOT an issue. The files of interest again crashed the same way under Compare (NOT individually).

Tech support had no interest in receiving my files to further troubleshoot my paid Acrobat DC Pro software.

Report · Jan 27, 2016

Hi LIngber‌,

Try this :-

1. Do you have the Preview Pane enabled in File Explorer? If so, can you disable it temporarily to see if the problem goes away.

2. Make sure the following directories exist on your machine. If not, please create them:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Adobe\Acrobat\DC\ToolsSearchCacheAcro

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Adobe\Acrobat\DC\ToolsSearchCacheRdr

replace USERNAME with your user name.

Does doing 1 and/or 2 resolve this issue?

Regards,

Aadesh

Report · Jan 27, 2016

Aadesh:

ToolsSearchCacheRdr was not there so I created it.

I checked that the Preview panel was off.

I get the same crash under Report mode, but not under Scan mode. However, using Scan mode is not very useful as it just target whole sections or pages that have small differences, instead of targeting just those differences.

Since my pdf files were created using pdflatex under texlive, I turned to using latexdiff that comes with texlive, on the old and new .tex files. latexdiff creates a new compare.tex file which also can be processed by pdflatex into a correctly marked-up pdf file.

If any Adobe support person wants to test this themselves on their own machines, they can contact me and I will send the the old and new pdf files.

Thanks for getting back to me, but I think this is the best solution for me to use when Acrobat DC Pro does not work.

Lester

Report · Oct 26, 2016

Hi,

Greetings! I am sorry to hear that you are facing issues with compare feature. Please try out the files in our improved Compare functionality in the latest version of Acrobat DC Pro. Reach out to us in case, you face any issues. You may also log a Bug Report or make a Feature Request at: Adobe Acrobat - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Also, we have significantly improved Compare functionality in our new release of Adobe Acrobat DC. Please update to the latest version to give it a try. The new Compare Files Tool offers a Side-by-Side view which provides a better experience in identifying differences and a modern UI.

Latest version for Adobe Acrobat DC build number: 2015.020.20039 (Continuous).

For more info about the new Compare tool, visit: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/compare-documents.html as well.

If you are still on Acrobat X or XI, you can check out our trial version at: https://acrobat.adobe.com/in/en/free-trial-download.html

Thanks,

Adobe Acrobat DC Team.