• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
0

How to remove PDFmaker from Office?

Guide ,
Sep 22, 2020 Sep 22, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hello!

New Office365 since recently, new Acrobat DC installed and one annoying add-in called PDFmaker keeps appearing in the Office apps, putting buttons and more. I can disable it, but I want to completely remove it from Office.

Strangely, Office says "it can't be removed because it has been installed for all users" which isn't true because I'm the only user of the Acrobat installation and since the CC apps are user-related I doubt it could install the add-in for all users. Anyway, it's still listed in the add-in list and this is annoying.

Any idea? I wish there was a separate installer or the actual installation of Adobe's apps could be user-defined, but those times are gone... 

TOPICS
General troubleshooting

Views

7.4K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 3 Correct answers

Adobe Employee , Sep 22, 2020 Sep 22, 2020

Hi Doc_Maik,

 

Thank you for reaching out.

 

Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker (the Convert To Adobe PDF button in the PDFMaker toolbar/tab) is an add-in that creates PDF files from Microsoft Office applications. This feature installs with Acrobat Professional and Standard. 

There is no direct way to completely remove the plugin from the MS Office at once. You may disable and remove the add-in from the MS office application one by one.

 

 

If you wish, you may customize the installation with the help of Ac

...

Votes

Translate

Translate
Guide , Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Hmm, I somehow can't edit my last reply. 

I found also this one: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-dc-downloads.html

Let's give it a try.

Votes

Translate

Translate
LEGEND , Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

PDFMaker is an integral part of Acrobat. Indeed, for many people, it is the key thing they are buying. PDFMaker, as well as its visible aspect in Office, is what is used by anyone choosing

- right click convert Office to PDF

- open Office doc in Acrobat

- other functions

I believe that if you remove it, Acrobat will detect this as a damaged installation and repair. You'd remove it by running Word as admin, which I can't recommend.

Votes

Translate

Translate
Adobe Employee ,
Sep 22, 2020 Sep 22, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi Doc_Maik,

 

Thank you for reaching out.

 

Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker (the Convert To Adobe PDF button in the PDFMaker toolbar/tab) is an add-in that creates PDF files from Microsoft Office applications. This feature installs with Acrobat Professional and Standard. 

There is no direct way to completely remove the plugin from the MS Office at once. You may disable and remove the add-in from the MS office application one by one.

 

 

If you wish, you may customize the installation with the help of Acrobat DC Customization Wizard. Please refer to the information provided in the following help document: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Wizard/features.html

 

Hope the information helps.

Let us know if you have any questions.

 

Thanks,

Meenakshi

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 23, 2020 Sep 23, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks, but like I said I can't remove it because Office says "It has been installed for all users. Only an admin can remove". I am an admin on my PC. Deactivation also doesn't work, it comes back the next day. Yes, it seems like this is a matter of Office, I'm aware, but it's caused by Acrobat installing the add-in unasked.  

I wanted to give the wizard a try, but ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/AcrobatDC/misc/ cannot be accessed (link broken or our firewall blocks). The link is on https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Wizard/basics.html

 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 23, 2020 Sep 23, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I'm gonna check this with our IT staff. Why FTP? I mean, Adobe has so many storage solutions.

 

Something else, in relation to this: Acrobat also installs handlers in Office and Windows which would cause to load the acrotray.exe when opening an Explorer window. This is extremely annoying as the tray tool is running in the background all the time. It would also run when never starting Acrobat in a day's work time.

I suppose I can also get rid of this using the wizard. 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Sep 23, 2020 Sep 23, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

For all users means if you will create another user this addon will be there. Only for one user will mean there will be no addon there. There is not just 1 user on your PC. There is an Administrator and Guest invisable accounts that can be activated and NT/Authority System, that cannot, and 100s of other accounts for different apps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 24, 2020 Sep 24, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I installed it from my personal account, from within the desktop client. It's not supposed to be installed for all users then. But since the Adobe installers are not configurable when installing from within the desktop client, the Acrobat installer installed the add-in for all users. Unasked.

But the worst is, if I remove it from Excel or Word, it will be back the next day. As if there was a task scheduled to reinstall the add-in every day, but I couldn't find one. That's creepy!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

The Adobe PDF printer will not work if you manage to remove Acrotray completely. It has been part of Acrobat for decades, as have the Office add-ons.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Is there actually a customizable offline installer for Acrobat? I only found this one https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/download-install-acrobat-subscription.html and it's only a downloader and it will, most likely, also do a silent installation. With an offline installer I could solve the PDFmaker problem by uninstalling Acrobat and re-installing.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hmm, I somehow can't edit my last reply. 

I found also this one: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-dc-downloads.html

Let's give it a try.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

PDFMaker is an integral part of Acrobat. Indeed, for many people, it is the key thing they are buying. PDFMaker, as well as its visible aspect in Office, is what is used by anyone choosing

- right click convert Office to PDF

- open Office doc in Acrobat

- other functions

I believe that if you remove it, Acrobat will detect this as a damaged installation and repair. You'd remove it by running Word as admin, which I can't recommend.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 25, 2020 Sep 25, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

(What Office says is precisely true; installing for all users - when you have only one user - is not at all the same as installing for one user).

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2023 Aug 02, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

It's so irritating being told that we should want some awful plugin. If you don't know the answer, keep quiet, don't instruct someone about why their question is wrong.

 

If you are on your own computer, you just have to run Word as administrator. Adobe will still reinstall it because they don't care about our preferences, but I'm working on finding out how to permanently disable it.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines