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jangemmecke
jangemmecke
Participant
September 22, 2016
Question

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

  • September 22, 2016
  • 11 replies
  • 47856 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

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    11 replies

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    Adorobat
    Adorobat
    Participating Frequently
    September 23, 2016

    Hi jangemmecke,

    I am sorry for the inconvenience.

    Try performing the step given in this link: adobe reader DC slow (Acrobat Reader)​

    Also, try updating Acrobat DC to the latest version.

    Let me know if it worked.

    Thank You,

    Shivam

    jangemmecke
    jangemmeckeAuthor
    Participant
    September 26, 2016

    Hi Shivam,

    thanks for the tip but unfortunately it is still quite unresponsive.

    15.016.20039 seems to be the newest version as there are no newer versions available or so  the updater tells me.

    Still thank you.

    Jan

    F
    Frewity
    Inspiring
    January 28, 2017

    Hi Shivam

    15.023.20056​ is the version I am using.

    I have uninstalled  Pro and removed the settings. I then downloaded and reinstalled Pro - same problem.

    I had a look at my iMac, same problem with the  user that is basically a clone of my MacPro.

    When I logged out and logged in as a different user, Pro worked like a rocket ship, fast as it should be, no spinning wheels or delays.

    I then went back to my MacPro and set up a new user and logged in, Acrobat works like a rocket ship again!!! yes!!!!

    OK, the fix is not good because I need to obviously run everything on the original login.

    Hope this helps, the same thing is happening on both computers.

    Look forward got your reply

    Ron


    Restore the Acrobat preferences files (Mac OS)

    Restore the Acrobat preferences files to eliminate problems caused by a damaged preferences file.

    Note:

    Re-creating the Acrobat preferences files restores settings to their defaults.

    • Quit Acrobat.

    • Drag the following files from the Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences folder to the Desktop:

      • Acrobat WebCapture Cookies
      • com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist or com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro_x86_9.0.plist
      • Acrobat Distiller Prefs and com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist (if you are troubleshooting an issue with Distiller)
      • The Acrobat folder, which contains preferences for forms (MRUFormsList), collaboration (OfflineDocs), and color settings (AcrobatColor Settings.csf)

    • Restart Acrobat

    If the problem recurs after you restore the Acrobat preferences files, then the problem isn’t related to preferences files. To restore custom settings, drag the files you moved in step 2 back to their original location. Then click OK to the alert “A newer item named ‘[filename]’ already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you're moving?”


    Regards,
    Rahul

    This has fixed the problem. Infact, I dumped all of the com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist files (13 of them)

    Thankyou all

    Ron

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