External Editor on Mac

[toddm72]

There's a preference "Use external JavaScript editor".

For the life of me, I can't get that to work. I set it to a text editor, and Acrobat opens the right document into it. But Acrobat sits there hanging. When I save, close and quit the application, Acrobat still sits there hanging. I have to Force Quit every time.

I've tried each of the editors I have laying around - VSCode, Brackets, Atom, LightTable... even TextEdit.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this feature broken?

[Joel Geraci · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure why that particular issue is happening but I can tell you that you don't want to use that feature even if it did; it's unreliable at best.

Instead, edit your code in your preferred editor, then copy/paste it into the Acrobat editor. You'll be much happier.

[toddm72]

Okay good to know! Thanks.

[JR Boulay]

"Acrobat sits there hanging. When I save, close and quit the application, Acrobat still sits there hanging. I have to Force Quit every time."

Welcome into the macOS version of Acrobat!

I've been reporting this problem for years, but since Acrobat 9 I've never been able to use a JavaScript external editor.
Like Joel, I copy-paste.