Participant

Question

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

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
September 22, 2016
11 replies
47810 views

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

This topic has been closed for replies.

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default4xstb56k7pyd

Participant

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

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wayned64447160

Participant

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.

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Gary15D5

Participant

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

G

grant5C7F

Participant

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

JR Boulay

Community Expert

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.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

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Russell27249495h9dq

Participant

This one worked for me - thank you 🙂

markuse17928595

Participant

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

Community Expert

I don't have have an english installation

Yes you have it: go to Preferences : Languages

😉

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

J

jay fresno

Inspiring

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!

gener7

Community Expert

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.

Cairn

Participating Frequently

Again - Acrobat DC is VERY slow and unresponsive for the first couple of minutes after startup. Happens EVERY time.

Adobe - anything?

luke mac

Participant

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.

Cairn

Participating Frequently

This issue as re-surfaced. I've added NOTHING to acrobat. No plug-ins, add-ons - nothing. Whenever I start up the program and open a doc, as soon as I try to begin a task, I have to wait a good 2-3mins before the spinning beachball allows me to do anything.

I'll try to reset the preferences again but, this feels like a bug to me.

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Rick Meikle

Known Participant

I'm the originator of this topic. The problem very much remains some 2 years later. I'm running CC 2019 (Acrobat build 18.11.20040.280397) and Mojave 10.14 on a Mac Pro (mid 2010). Trashing the pref files noted in Rahul's post made no difference (quitting Acrobat before and restarting after). In fact, there was no "Adobe WebCapture Cookies" or distiller prefs or Acrobat folder. Just the plist and three plist "lockfiles" were trashed. The problem was quite obvious with a 2 page PDF file from a 3rd party data sheet (for a thermal imaging product). It was sluggish to scroll, moving in herky jerk jumps after briefly stalling. Using "Custom resolution" is still the way to avoid it. It is disappointing that Adobe could not resolve this easily reproducible problem given so much time. Apparently, there are very few users who are bothered by this, or it would have received more attention. I have given up on being able to see PDF files at actual size on my screen (same size as when printed). C'est la vie!

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Rick Meikle

Known Participant

When I first reported this problem, my installation of Acrobat DC was stuck on version 18.11.20040.280397. The Creative Cloud app thought it was fully updated, and it generated an error message when trying to delete Acrobat DC. (Even after managing to delete Acrobat DC, the CC app still though it was installed and updated.) Acrobat DC is finally installed and updated to version 19.10.20069.311970, thanks to some brilliant troubleshooting from Adobe’s online chat service. (It took 3 reps to forward me to the 4th rep, who actually got it done, and it took about a half hour of time in a computer sharing session to resolve. But I was very impressed. And I was left shaking my head at the inscrutable convolutions of the Creative Cloud installation, activation, uninstallation, etc.) I relate all of this because I can now state that the current version of Acrobat DC is identical to the 18.x version in that using the “System resolution” preference for “Page Display” still causes an extreme slowdown of Acrobat operations. The problem still disappears completely when using “Custom resolution” instead. If any of the Adobe staff who tried to address this problem are still receptive, I can provide a PDF file that should let them reproduce the problem for themselves. I can also provide a screen capture movie of it. (I get the feeling that the version problem derailed them.)

AkanchhaS8194121

Legend

Hi Rick,

We apologize for the delay in follow up on this issue.

If any of the Adobe staff who tried to address this problem are still receptive, I can provide a PDF file that should let them reproduce the problem for themselves. I can also provide a screen capture movie of it. (I get the feeling that the version problem derailed them.)

If you are still struggling with the same problem, I request you to please share the sample file, as we would like to test the same at our end. Also, can attach the screenshot, following the instructions given here- https://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-7043#jive_content_id_How_do_I_attach_a_screenshot

"You can share the file with us via email. And you can send it to the email address that is shared via private message. Please do mention your forum thread in the subject"

Additional:

Adobe Acrobat official update (19.010.20098) is now available. This update will be automatically pushed to all existing installations of Acrobat. If you want, you may also manually trigger the update early by opening the application and going to Help > Check for Updates.

DC Release Notes — Release Notes for Acrobat DC Products

Thanks,

Akanchha

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