how to install Adobe as a Printer driver

[billb83652764]

I recently installed Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional on a new Surface Book.  On my old machine (Surface Pro 3) when I printed an Excel file I would have Adobe as a Printer Option.   Or when I printed anything for that matter.  Now, on the Book I no longer have Adobe as an option - just "Microsoft Print to PDF."   I tried to figure out how to add "Adobe" as a printer but no luck.  Any suggestions?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Acrobat 8 as released was not compatible with any version of Windows beyond Windows XP 32-bit in terms of its ability to install and use the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance. This was due to (1) the fact that 64-bit versions of Windows required additional and different components to interface with the driver and (2) changes made in Windows itself for even 32-bit Windows forced changes to be made in Acrobat. There was an update bring Acrobat 8 to version 8.1 and that update restored the ability to install and use Adobe PDF.

I strongly suspect that your “new Surface Book” computer is running Windows 10. Officially, Adobe does not support Acrobat 8 on Windows 10. However if you install Acrobat 8 and update it to 8.1, it may properly support AdobePDF, but there are no guarantees. Please understand that your version of Acrobat is quite old (over 9 years old) and wasn't designed to run on today's hardware or operating system versions.

But good luck. Let us know how it works out!

          - Dov