Acrobat DC very slow and unresponsive, spinning beach ball when using interface

[jangemmecke]

Since I installed Acrobat DC, I dread opening PDFs with it as it is very unresponsive and slow. Everything takes ages. One click: several seconds of spinning beach ball, next click: the same.

The bigger the file, the slower the app. Today I opened a 2.1 MB file with 90 pages (business cards, text plus vector based logo, 2c: black and one spot colour, no backgrounds) and standard operations such as changing the display settings, showing thumbnails, rearranging pages and deleting pages took me about 15 minutes in contrast to 2. I cannot work with this tool an a professional basis anymore. 😞

I hoped that an update would patch this but i seems that there have not been many updates to Acrobat DC showing up in my Creative Cloud panel. 😞

Some time ago I uninstalled it and reinstalled it from the cloud but no changes at all. Still slow, still unresponsive performance.

I really hate the new version. First you had to uninstall the old one which worked fine, instead of being able to use both versions as with other Adobe applications. Then the interface had been redesigned YET AGAIN. Zooming seems way more complicated as the normal shortcuts as in other Adobe apps (drawing zoom in window with magnifier) don't work anymore.

Then this horrible "optimize for reading" message kept popping up, stuck in the foreground and prevented changes from being saved. (That has changed now and ist working though this 90s era "optimize for reading" window still appears on a regular basis.) That was horrible and nerve-racking.

But it got worse with the freezing and the spinning beach ball whenever I try to interact with the interface.

I searched the web but not much is found on this issue. There were some ideas in this forum (deleting the "read out loud" plugin, deactivating privacy and security settings etc.) but no changes.

I made Acrobat Reader my PDF default and it is way faster but of course it is much less capable. Even better (because less bloated) is Apple’s Preview that is really fast and works instantly with the same files.

All the other Adobe apps I installed on my system work completely fine (Adobe CS6 and the latest Adobe CC 2015); InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Muse, Bridge.

I suspect that the app tries to connect with some server or to do all kinds of interaction with the hard drive and therefore slows down immensely. Or maybe support or display operations like rendering? In Activity Monitor it is often marked as "does not respond".

  • OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

  • iMac 27 inch, End of 2012

  • 1.12 TB Fusion Drive

  • RAM 16 GB

  • Adobe Acrobat DC 15.016.20039

  • Adobe CC licence

[luke mac]

I've also experienced slowness and high CPU usage with acrobat through multiple versions on MacOS (from El-Capitan through to Catalina). I've not complained until now as I have just put up with it, but the problem is so bad now that I refuse to use Acrobat to open PDF files. I am unimpressed by the lack of support by Adobe with this issue. I am certain that with an appropriate set of real world test files, that this problem is easily reproducible. Adobe, please focus your efforts to resolving these performance issues with Acrobat.

[gener7]

The spinning beachball that would show up for 20 seconds after opening Acrobat is now gone on both my Mid 2012 Macbook Pros running 10.14.6 and Acrobat Pro DC 2019.12.20040, Build 19.12.20040.345140

I waited for a week to be sure. Still no delays especially in double-clicking on a PDF to launch Acrobat.

The only event I can tie it to was an upgrade of the Creative Cloud Desktop app to version 5.00.534

If you have not updated that app, give that a try.

[jay fresno]

I'm using the most current version of Acrobat Pro, 2019.021.20049, on Windows 7. I have the same problem. Acrobat launches ok, but then it stalls. Each step or click that I do, Acrobat stalls for several minutes. Someone, please help!

[markuse17928595]

For me it did the trick to set the resolution from system preference to user defined in the settings. I don't have have an english installation so I can't give the exact settings names. 
In german it's "Seitenanzeige" and then "Auflösung". Must be something like page display and resolution in english.  The software becomes resonsive and actually useable again. 
However, it's really poor that Adobe has not been fixing this for years now... 

[JR Boulay]

I don't have have an english installation

Yes you have it: go to Preferences : Languages

😉

[JR Boulay]

Acrobat DC is VERY slow and unresponsive for the first couple of minutes after startup

Go to : Preferences : General : untick "Show online storage when opening files" and "Show online storage when saving files".

Go to : Preferences : Accessibility : untick "Enable assitive technology support".

It will give it a boost.

[Russell27249495h9dq]

This one worked for me - thank you 🙂

[grant5C7F]

Helo Adobe

Completly in agreement with above comments from 2016 here we are in 2020 and this sofware is still super slow   frezzing all the time 

I will get rid of it and change to apple preview 

Best 

[wayned64447160]

Acrobat DC is totally unusable on my iMac OSv10.15. Spinning beachball and no response.  Infuriating.  Trying to make basic comments on a multi-page PDF document less than 3MB.  Line drawings mostly.  Looks like it's been going on for year reading this post.  Anyone have a solution? Might need to move to Preview.

[Gary15D5]

It is no better

It is unfortunately currently a waste of money and time

Everyone continually lookes for a solution by changing settings or preferences and none of it makes any difference

It really should not be marketed until these issues of slowness and freezing are resolved

This has been going on for at least four years

[default4xstb56k7pyd]

I figured out how to make it faster: Edit --> Preferences --> Forms --> Uncheck everything --> OK