Acrobat 7 toolbar in Word 2003 (2003 SR1)

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Hi all

I’ve just installed Acrobat 7. Apart from starting much more quickly obat 6 and some interesting new features, I’ve encountered an ‘issue’ which is limiting its usefulness considerably: the PDFmaker toolbar in Word is only visible in the new document created when Word opens – if I close that document or open / create another document, the toolbar vanishes.

Before all the helpful loungers offer the standard (yet very sound) suggestions for the usual ways to switch a toolbar back on, let me empahsise that I have tried all the usual tricks: e.g. right clicking on a toolbar and toggling on “PDF Maker 7”; checking the “Templates and Add-ins” settings, uninstalling / reinstalling and more.

I’d be grateful for your help in solving this. I’ve been to the Adobe site – there is a specific page on this issue (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330984.html) , but none of the suggestions worked for me.

For what it’s worth, I am running WOPR 2003, but no other add-ins.

There are a few other weird things to note:

1) Version 7 doesn’t seem to create the familiar PDF Maker.dot – it gets its smarts from some other startup beastie called “AcrobatPDFMakerForOffice.tlb” – perhaps that’s why the conventional solutions don’t work.

2) In the initial document that appears when Word starts (based on normal.dot), the PDF Maker 7 toolbar is listed with all the other toolbars. On any subsequent document, it is not listed.

3) The errant behaviour is not corrected if I disable the three WOPR .dot files in “Templates and Add-Ins”.

4) When it is on display, the toolbar works as expected (i.e. PDF is created) – but it also disappears after it has been used.

5) Even when the toolbar is present, there are no PDF macros visible.

6) “Longhand” PDF creation (via Word’s print function) works fine – there doesn’t appear to be any problem at all with the PDF generation functionality.

I’m going out of my mind here – at this stage I could even gain comfort from a cumbersome workaround.

Thanks in advance for your sage advice

Neil

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Can you use the Organiser to copy the toolbar from the initial document to Normal.Dot?

StuartR

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Stuart

Thanks for your reply – unfortunately that’s another of the common-sense techniques that doesn’t help. When I fire up the organiser in the initial document, the toolbar is not even listed, even though it is displayed.

Since my initial post, I’ve also tried turning macro security to “low” which had no effect.

I think my next step is to uninstall WOPR & see if there is some sort of conflict.

Cheers

Neil

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How strange.

I think you will have to wait for someone else who has Acrobat 7 to let us know if this is a common issue or a problem with your configuration.

StuartR

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How strange.

I think you will have to wait for someone else who has Acrobat 7 to let us know if this is a common issue or a problem with your configuration.

StuartR

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Stuart

Thanks for your reply – unfortunately that’s another of the common-sense techniques that doesn’t help. When I fire up the organiser in the initial document, the toolbar is not even listed, even though it is displayed.

Since my initial post, I’ve also tried turning macro security to “low” which had no effect.

I think my next step is to uninstall WOPR & see if there is some sort of conflict.

Cheers

Neil

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Stuart

I neglected to mention in my initial post that the Acrobat menu in items in Word are displaying almost exactly the same behaviour as the toolbar. That seems quite logical to me, but perhaps it sheds some light on this.

Cheers

Neil

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Stuart

I neglected to mention in my initial post that the Acrobat menu in items in Word are displaying almost exactly the same behaviour as the toolbar. That seems quite logical to me, but perhaps it sheds some light on this.

Cheers

Neil

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Can you use the Organiser to copy the toolbar from the initial document to Normal.Dot?

StuartR

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Let’s assume that Adobe supplied a global template or COM Add-in, and that either an AutoExec procedure or COM Add-in startup code creates the menu and toolbars when Word first starts up, and that rather than creating the menu and toolbars in Normal.dot–so that the changes are persistent across all Word environments–the code creates them in Document1. This is extremely dysfunctional and difficult to comprehend. My first thought for a short term workaround is to save Document1 as a template and store it in your Startup folder. It should load and persist throughout your Word session. Plan B is to figure out the name of the procedure that runs and either edit it or run it whenever you change documents. That’s bad, though, if it adds toolbars to your documents, you definitely don’t want that. Plan C is to wait for an update from Adobe.

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Jefferson

Thanks once again for your attention – whenever I post one of my queries at the Lounge, you always seem to be there!!

In a nutshell, your suggestion didn’t work – though as soon as I read it, I was sure it was the best idea so far. Your explanation of Adobe’s implementation sounds quite plausible – I’ve certainly never seen anything quite this bizarre. There is absolutely no sign of Acrobat 7 having created any Word template anywhere – in fact, I have just been browsing the .CAB file on the Acrobat 7 CD with all of the compressed installation files, and there is nothing of the form “.DOT” – so it definitely uses some other method to ‘deliver its payload’ (occasionally!).

But you may find this additional information instructive:

1) When I open the template I created based on “Document 1”, the PDFMaker toolbar is nowhere to be seen. Grrr. But it was a good idea.

2) When I start Word, the PDFMaker toolbar and menu items are the last things to appear – the basic (normal.dot?) toolbars appear first, then the WOPR toolbars, followed by the PDFMaker stuff. Not sure if this tells you anything, but there is a noticeable lag.

3) For the record, I have just finished my annual ritual of wiping my system clean and reinstalling everything – so I doubt the cause of the problem is a corruption somewhere.

It’s time to remove WOPR and see what happens.

Once again, many thanks for your help.

Best regards

Neil

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Jefferson

Thanks once again for your attention – whenever I post one of my queries at the Lounge, you always seem to be there!!

In a nutshell, your suggestion didn’t work – though as soon as I read it, I was sure it was the best idea so far. Your explanation of Adobe’s implementation sounds quite plausible – I’ve certainly never seen anything quite this bizarre. There is absolutely no sign of Acrobat 7 having created any Word template anywhere – in fact, I have just been browsing the .CAB file on the Acrobat 7 CD with all of the compressed installation files, and there is nothing of the form “.DOT” – so it definitely uses some other method to ‘deliver its payload’ (occasionally!).

But you may find this additional information instructive:

1) When I open the template I created based on “Document 1”, the PDFMaker toolbar is nowhere to be seen. Grrr. But it was a good idea.

2) When I start Word, the PDFMaker toolbar and menu items are the last things to appear – the basic (normal.dot?) toolbars appear first, then the WOPR toolbars, followed by the PDFMaker stuff. Not sure if this tells you anything, but there is a noticeable lag.

3) For the record, I have just finished my annual ritual of wiping my system clean and reinstalling everything – so I doubt the cause of the problem is a corruption somewhere.

It’s time to remove WOPR and see what happens.

Once again, many thanks for your help.

Best regards

Neil

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Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve found the solution – uninstall WOPR. As soon as I did that, the Acrobat stuff worked as advertised. And as soon as I re-installed WOPR, the problem returned…

I’ll drop a line to the nice WOPR support people…

Thanks for your suggestions

Cheers

Neil

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Hello Techspeak:

Can you please advise me about this new version of Acrobat 7, does it allow you to save a word file as a pdf?

Much appreciated.

dillon

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Dillon

Like all previous versions of Acrobat (I’m referring to the full version, not the free reader), that is its exact purpose – but not just Word documents. It makes it very easy to convert all Office documents to PDFs – Office apps get a new Acrobat toolbar when you install it, so one click is all it takes. Files created by all other applications can also be converted very easily, but it might take one or two or more steps.

Hope that helps!

neil

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Dillon

Like all previous versions of Acrobat (I’m referring to the full version, not the free reader), that is its exact purpose – but not just Word documents. It makes it very easy to convert all Office documents to PDFs – Office apps get a new Acrobat toolbar when you install it, so one click is all it takes. Files created by all other applications can also be converted very easily, but it might take one or two or more steps.

Hope that helps!

neil

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Hello Techspeak:

Can you please advise me about this new version of Acrobat 7, does it allow you to save a word file as a pdf?

Much appreciated.

dillon

Reply | Quote

Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve found the solution – uninstall WOPR. As soon as I did that, the Acrobat stuff worked as advertised. And as soon as I re-installed WOPR, the problem returned…

I’ll drop a line to the nice WOPR support people…

Thanks for your suggestions

Cheers

Neil

Reply | Quote

Let’s assume that Adobe supplied a global template or COM Add-in, and that either an AutoExec procedure or COM Add-in startup code creates the menu and toolbars when Word first starts up, and that rather than creating the menu and toolbars in Normal.dot–so that the changes are persistent across all Word environments–the code creates them in Document1. This is extremely dysfunctional and difficult to comprehend. My first thought for a short term workaround is to save Document1 as a template and store it in your Startup folder. It should load and persist throughout your Word session. Plan B is to figure out the name of the procedure that runs and either edit it or run it whenever you change documents. That’s bad, though, if it adds toolbars to your documents, you definitely don’t want that. Plan C is to wait for an update from Adobe.

Reply | Quote