Adobe Acrobat Toolbars – STOP!!! (2003)

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I have Office 11 and Adobe Acrobat 6 Pro. Occasionally I want to turn a document into a pdf file.

But every every every time I sneeze the Adobe Acrobat toolbar has reappeared in Word. They appear on every new document and email I create or edit. If I unclick the Acrobat toolbar they go away – until I sneeze, or some other event I have not been able to figure out (maybe it’s just two minutes elapsing or something).

I customize my Office Tools bars heavily – I want over 50 buttons + the menu on 2 rows (unless I turn on Drawing) – Adobe swiping several inches of toolbar consistently bumps me up to 3 rows.

Please help me (I live in a shack that only has running water when it rains, my computer is made out of discarded Pepsi cans, my Dad/Wife/Son/Daughter/Strangers/Husband beat me)

————————–
THIS ISN’T A WORD PROBLEM – TALK TO ADOBE PEOPLE!

I don’t know a GREAT forum of Adobe experts. The WOPR Lounge is fantastic. So blast me away with your brilliance (like always). There’s only been one time I stumped you all and had to figure it out for myself (that was in FrontPage, not the strong suit in Office).

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Try the following:

1. Select Tools | Customize…
2. Note the exact name of the Adobe toolbar in the Toolbars tab.
3. Close the Customize dialog.
4. Switch to the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11)
5. Activate the Immediate window (Ctrl+G)
6. Type

   Application.CommandBars(“AdobeToolbarName”).Enabled = False

   where AdobeToolbarName is the name you noted in step 2. Then press Enter.

7. Exit the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F4)

Hopefully this kills the Adobe toolbar for longer than it takes to sneeze. This method works for me in Word 2002 for the Web toolbar, but not for the Reviewing toolbar, which even silver stakes and garlic cannot keep away.

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It certainly disables it until you exit from Word and restart.

Even adding Application.CommandBars(“PDFMaker 6.0”).Enabled = False to an AutoOpen procedure in Normal.Dot does not work permanently, presumably the PDFMaker Macro runs after Normal.Dot has been opened.

It may be just as easy to use Tools > Templates and Add-Ins to clear the check box for PDFMaker.Dot which gets rid of the Adobe toolbar and menus, you can always check it again when you want to create a PDF file.

StuartR

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StuartR,

I’m running Word 2000, and to get rid of the Adobe toolbar I followed your procedure. Whoops, it didn’t work for me! Un-checking PDFMaker in Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ons did _not_ disable the Adobe toolbar on my system. But in following your lead I learned another way to fix the problem that did work for me.

What I had to do was go to C:Microsoft OfficeOfficeStartup, and in the folder rename “PDFMaker.dot” to something else. That finally got rid of the toolbar permanently.

Oh, yes — Before I did the above, I copied the two Adobe icons to one of my regular Word toolbars where they work just fine, without that intrusive Adobe toolbar.

Mucklucks

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Revisiting this thread, after a long pause, because someone posted a pointer to it.

You said that my method didn’t work for you, so you renamed the PDFMaker.DOT file in the Startup directory.

My suggested method is that you

• move PDFMaker.DOT from Word’s startup directory to somewhere completely different.
  This stops it from being automatically loaded each time you start Word.
• then using Tools > Templates and Add-Ins > Add… you can add this template from the location you have moved it to.
• finally clear the checkbox so that the template is not automatically loaded from its new location[/list]After doing this, you won’t normally see the Acrobat toolbars, but if you want to use them you can set the check box in Templates and Add Ins for a few minutes and then clear it again.

  StuartR

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Thanks, I’ll be sure to try this because it’s driving me nuts to have it pop up and have to manual close it down over and over.

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(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

Having been plagued by rogue Acrobat toolbars in all my Office apps I finally found a way of disabling them without a complete uninstall and a custom reinstall of Acrobat. As the man says in the link below … just go to Add or Remove Programmes and custom uninstall the offending toolbars from there. The piece also explains how to hack the registry if your disk has gone walkabout. Even without them you can still create your PDF by printing to the distiller.

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/acrobat.htm%5B/url%5D

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The trouble with this method is that printing to distiller doesn’t handle all the cross references, headings, bookmarks etc. PDFMaker is a real pain when you don’t want it, but it does a great job when it’s needed.

StuartR

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StuartR,

I’m running Word 2000, and to get rid of the Adobe toolbar I followed your procedure. Whoops, it didn’t work for me! Un-checking PDFMaker in Word>Tools>Templates & Add-ons did _not_ disable the Adobe toolbar on my system. But in following your lead I learned another way to fix the problem that did work for me.

What I had to do was go to C:Microsoft OfficeOfficeStartup, and in the folder rename “PDFMaker.dot” to something else. That finally got rid of the toolbar permanently.

Oh, yes — Before I did the above, I copied the two Adobe icons to one of my regular Word toolbars where they work just fine, without that intrusive Adobe toolbar.

Mucklucks

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It certainly disables it until you exit from Word and restart.

Even adding Application.CommandBars(“PDFMaker 6.0”).Enabled = False to an AutoOpen procedure in Normal.Dot does not work permanently, presumably the PDFMaker Macro runs after Normal.Dot has been opened.

It may be just as easy to use Tools > Templates and Add-Ins to clear the check box for PDFMaker.Dot which gets rid of the Adobe toolbar and menus, you can always check it again when you want to create a PDF file.

StuartR

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Try the following:

1. Select Tools | Customize…
2. Note the exact name of the Adobe toolbar in the Toolbars tab.
3. Close the Customize dialog.
4. Switch to the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11)
5. Activate the Immediate window (Ctrl+G)
6. Type

   Application.CommandBars(“AdobeToolbarName”).Enabled = False

   where AdobeToolbarName is the name you noted in step 2. Then press Enter.

7. Exit the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F4)

Hopefully this kills the Adobe toolbar for longer than it takes to sneeze. This method works for me in Word 2002 for the Web toolbar, but not for the Reviewing toolbar, which even silver stakes and garlic cannot keep away.

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I think if you go into your Word Startup folder (usually ..userApplication DataMicrosoftWord) you’ll see that Adobe has sneaked it in there. Delete it and it bothers you no further.
Merry Christmas
Peter

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> Delete it and it bothers you no further.

But then you can’t use it to create PDF files with all the hyperlinks, table of contents etc.

StuartR

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I did the VBA exercise Hans suggested. It worked. Until I rebooted. I didn’t find anything odd in the directory suggested by Peter. But I thank you both.

I didn’t see Stuart’s posts – that will teach me that I shouldn’t rely on email for notifications! I think Stuart’s suggestions would have worked if I hadn’t just modified some directories.

After searching for numerous possible files with “pdf” in the name,
I found a log indicating that Acrobat had run routines or programs called SetupWord, SetupExcel, etc.
But the relevant finds were PDFMaker.xla and PDFMaker.dot files located in:

Program Files Office XLStartup
Program Files Office Startup
Documents and Settings Administrator Application Data Microsoft Excel XLStart
Documents and Settings user-name— Application Data Microsoft Excel XLStart

I actually copied the folders so I could easily restore them if I ever find the need.

Thank you all.

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The most effective method I have found is to Move the file PDFMAKER.DOT from it’s default location at C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10Startup to a personal folder under My Documents. Then use Word’s Toools > Templates and Add Ins… menu to Add… the template back in from its new location, finally clear the check box to prevent it from loading when word is started.

The effect of this is that I can easily use the PDFMaker macro by going to Tools > Templates and Add Ins… and checking the box next to PDFMaker, but that it doesn’t bother me when I don’t want to use it.

StuartR

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The most effective method I have found is to Move the file PDFMAKER.DOT from it’s default location at C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10Startup to a personal folder under My Documents. Then use Word’s Toools > Templates and Add Ins… menu to Add… the template back in from its new location, finally clear the check box to prevent it from loading when word is started.

The effect of this is that I can easily use the PDFMaker macro by going to Tools > Templates and Add Ins… and checking the box next to PDFMaker, but that it doesn’t bother me when I don’t want to use it.

StuartR

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I haven’t checked with Word2002/2003, or with the newest version of PDFMaker.dot.

In Word2000, the following AutoExec macro in Normal.dot removed the offending toolbar.
The drawback of this “solution” is that Word takes 3 seconds longer to fully start.

Sub AutoExec()
    Application.OnTime _
      When:=Now + TimeValue("00:00:03"), _
      Name:="ZapEm"
End Sub
'
Sub ZapEm()
  Dim i As Long

  For i = 1 To Application.CommandBars.Count
    If InStr(UCase(Application.CommandBars(i).Name), "PDFMAKER") > 0 Then
        Application.CommandBars(i).Visible = False
    End If
  Next i
End Sub

Klaus

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The latest version of PDFMaker makes the toolbar reappear every time you swap windows, so I assume that it has its own event handler that uses the WindowChange event to make the toolbar visible again.

I suspect that your Macro would work with Adobe 6 if you changed the line
Application.CommandBars(i).Visible = False
to
Application.CommandBars(i).Enabled = False

StuartR

Edited by StuartR on 29 Dec to correct a spelling error

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The latest version of PDFMaker makes the toolbar reappear every time you swap windows, so I assume that it has its own event handler that uses the WindowChange event to make the toolbar visible again.

I suspect that your Macro would work with Adobe 6 if you changed the line
Application.CommandBars(i).Visible = False
to
Application.CommandBars(i).Enabled = False

StuartR

Edited by StuartR on 29 Dec to correct a spelling error

Reply | Quote

I haven’t checked with Word2002/2003, or with the newest version of PDFMaker.dot.

In Word2000, the following AutoExec macro in Normal.dot removed the offending toolbar.
The drawback of this “solution” is that Word takes 3 seconds longer to fully start.

Sub AutoExec()
    Application.OnTime _
      When:=Now + TimeValue("00:00:03"), _
      Name:="ZapEm"
End Sub
'
Sub ZapEm()
  Dim i As Long

  For i = 1 To Application.CommandBars.Count
    If InStr(UCase(Application.CommandBars(i).Name), "PDFMAKER") > 0 Then
        Application.CommandBars(i).Visible = False
    End If
  Next i
End Sub

Klaus

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I did the VBA exercise Hans suggested. It worked. Until I rebooted. I didn’t find anything odd in the directory suggested by Peter. But I thank you both.

I didn’t see Stuart’s posts – that will teach me that I shouldn’t rely on email for notifications! I think Stuart’s suggestions would have worked if I hadn’t just modified some directories.

After searching for numerous possible files with “pdf” in the name,
I found a log indicating that Acrobat had run routines or programs called SetupWord, SetupExcel, etc.
But the relevant finds were PDFMaker.xla and PDFMaker.dot files located in:

Program Files Office XLStartup
Program Files Office Startup
Documents and Settings Administrator Application Data Microsoft Excel XLStart
Documents and Settings user-name— Application Data Microsoft Excel XLStart

I actually copied the folders so I could easily restore them if I ever find the need.

Thank you all.

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> Delete it and it bothers you no further.

But then you can’t use it to create PDF files with all the hyperlinks, table of contents etc.

StuartR

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I think if you go into your Word Startup folder (usually ..userApplication DataMicrosoftWord) you’ll see that Adobe has sneaked it in there. Delete it and it bothers you no further.
Merry Christmas
Peter

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