Default Hide Navigation Pane On Left Side Acrobat Reader DC

[TriendaXTRA]

I to have files open without the huge navigation pane open on the left side. It's messing with previews in Solidworks PDM. This meaning I want ALL PDF files to open and NOT HAVE TO CLICK THE SMALL ARROW to hide the pane ON EVERY SINGLE DRAWING. Here are some snips.

What opens like now:

How we want it to look by default (without having to click on every file):

Thanks in advance!

[AkanchhaS]

Hi Seth7227,

As mentioned above, that you would like to disable the side bar.

But unfortunately, you can not disable it permanently as Its a default behavior of the application.

But you can manage to hide the side bar by changing the preferences settings so that it will not come up automatically when you open the document next time.

• Open document
• Click on the arrow to hide the side bar.
• Go to Edit>Preferences>Documents> Under Open settings check "Restore last view settings when reopening documents"
• Click OK.
• Close Application and relaunch it.
• Reopen document, the side bar should be hidden now.

Hope this is helpful

Regards,

Akanchha

[TriendaXTRA]

There are no ways to change the default settings? Registry Settings, preferences, scripts, no way at all?

I've seen a few people complain about this, will there be a fix?

There was a tools pane that opened on the right side, if I go to (Edit > Preferences > Documents > Check, Remember current state of tools pane) that no longer opens or shows in the previewer which is very perfect! Why is there no option like that with navigation/bookmark panes on the left?

This is causing multiple issues for us.

Thanks again,

Seth

[usermac]

Thanks. Works great on Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2017 for Mac.

Hopefully Adobe will allow to set that as default for all documents the first time that they are open.

[AdobeAstinus]

This is stupid. The box that the Adobe mod mentioned is still there but it doesn't function.

Typical Adobe. Man, you all have consistently made Acrobat a pain in the ass to use over the last decade. Always changing small but key features. Obfuscating settings. I use Acrobat daily and I wish there was a proper alternative.

[terka457]

it is 2020 you should do something for it. you know that there is open-source pdf viewer right?

[DLSiev1ng]

This does not work running Acrobat Reader 2017.011.30180 on MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1.

[Bernie5C19]

lol "suck it up and deal with it" is not a valid response. do your research and see how many actual complaints you find on the web about this and resolve it. stop wasting everyone's time with this "workaround".

[Victor280356910kr8]

Doesn't work on the latest version of Acrobat (as of 2023-01). 

It's pretty sad that Adobe is steadily ruining Acrobat to the point where it's pretty much a piece of trash. Acrobat v. 9 had everything right. Now Acrobat barely works. You even have to pay for basic features like Rotate 90 degrees, whereas it was a free feature in the past.

[Christal L]

This does not work.  I have tried every suggestion and still can't get rid of this.
It's realle annoying, especially when I open a document every couple minutes.

[Jean-Marc29268704334b]

Unfortunately it does not work at all on my computer. Nothing changes when I reopen the application.

[stevea40092723]

The answer to this is this:

There is a system registry fix that will resolve this, which will have to be done on all clients to alleviate this issue.

The location in the registry is here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / SolidWorks / Applications / PDMWorks Enterprise / FileFormats / .pdf

Under the registry key 4, clear all data.

[arejfour]

I just updated to the "new" version of reader 23.006.20360-what a mess. I tried to hide the keft side panel following the procedure I used on the previous version with no effect. I tried several times with no effect. I just went back to the previous version and everything works.

[deerspotter · Accepted solution]

Finally after hours of searching, i have figured it out by manually trying all the registry keys related to adobe one by one.

This is the solution that works 100% (todays date 10/20/17)
Using Adobe Acrobat (Pro), versionL 10.1.16

Open notepad.exe

copy this code and save-as no-navpane.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\Acrobat.exe\shell\Open\command]

@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Adobe\\Acrobat 10.0\\Acrobat\\Acrobat.exe\" /A \"navpanes=0\" \"%1\""

Where you see Acrobat 10.0 you can replace with your ## version or .exe program URL and it will work.

[vklrc]

Using Acrobat Reader 11, I found this to be a great starting point. The corresponding registry key did not have the desired effect, unfortunately, but I changed 5 additional keys to use the same parameters, and now it works. Possibly, I only had to change 1 or 2, but I didn't take the time to test them one at a time.

The ones I changed were:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\AcroRD32.exe\shell\Read\command [didn't work, but I kept it changed]

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\acrobat\shell\open\command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document\Shell\Open\Command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.11\shell\Open\command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.11\shell\Read\command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7\shell\read\Command

Thanks for the advice!

[areels]

Do you know which key is affecting internet explorer plugin? we have an app using builtin ie to display pdf files. These changes are fixing and removing bookmarks pane with regular pdf files but, ie plugin still shows bookmarks.

[harryyoud]

For anyone finding this now, I tried each of these and the one that worked was:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.DC\shell\Read\command

I changed (Default) from:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "%1"

to:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" /A "navpanes=0" "%1"

[Guest]

For the current version of Acrobat Reader DC (As of October 2019) the single registry change posted by harryoud above works perfectly.  This should be marked as the new correct answer given that the original solution, while applicable to older versions, is now outdated.

[maikeydii]

Any ideas what registry entry one should modify if you want to chage the behaviour of the Acrobat Reader plugin that Solidworks PDM filemanager uses to display PDF-files?

The process that is started when PDF-file is displayed is C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\AcroRd32.exe

Would the location still be that

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.DC\shell\Read\command

 but instead of

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" /A "navpanes=0" "%1"

it should read, right?

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Acrobat\AcroRd32.exe" /A "navpanes=0" "%1"

[BAC@Work]

Thx for this fix.

It worked lika a charm on one of my computers , unfortunately not on the other one (both win10 64bit).

Still one is better than none 🙂

@Adobe

Plz make this the correct answer.

Plz fix the settings so this is possible without registry hacks.

[terrymatley]

Hi harryyoud, do you have a step by step methodology for me to achieve this on a mac please? I am relatively good with registry edits but as much details as possible would be much appreciated, thanks in advance! To clarify, want to change so bookmark panel on left doesnt open with every document

[Mr. Speedlight]

I didn't find any of the above solutions that I tried above worked and not happy with Acrobat Reader DC v2019.021.xxxxx; I tried Windows 10, Microsoft Edge. It's clean and easy to read. No pains panes on either side.

I may still use Acrobat Reader DC when I need and advanced search.

I've really like Acrobat Reader in the passed but it's getting to be a pain to use.

[Mr. Speedlight]

Since an update to Adobe Reader DC stated that it would uninstall a legacy, perpetual license installation of Adobe Acrobat I deleted Adobe Reader DC from my Windows computer and will no longer use Adobe Reader DC. I consider this deleting of legacy software by Adobe underhanded. 

[Les34297304tv9j]

LOL...the decomissioned license servers for Photoshop when they converted to subscription system. As a result - I lost my permanent Photoshop license when my old computer finally died. Couldn't reinstall Photoshop again - a product for which I paid a hefty stack of $$$...

[eburt]

Thank you!!!! I was going mad with all the side windows opening over all my documents and schematics. You rock!