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Adobe acrobat and reader issues

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6 replies

by t_bonee

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Hi all,

I have a terminal server that has Adobe acrobat and reader installed on it. Acrobat itself is only needed by 2 users. Everyone else needs to use reader.

Unfortunately, Acrobat makes itself the default for opening PDF files. Is there to make reader the default program instead of acrobat proper with out having to change the file extension settings for every user under Tools->Folder Options->File Types?

6 replies

by nilt

You don't say which versions of the software you're dealing with. Personally I have Acrobat 6. When installing Reader 7 after having the full version of 6 installed it allows me to have it default to the Reader when viewing so I'll assume it's version 7 you're asking about. If not, let us know.

I suspect the best way to get there globally for you is via the Registry. By the way, if you're unsure how to follow these steps, you're better off not doing so. (That's my "Scary Registry Warning".)

First, change one user?s settings to default to Reader. Then browse to this Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.pdf

Once you?ve clicked on the .pdf bit in the tree, click File > Extract and save a .reg file. Then apply the same setting to each user via that Reg file. In my cursory test this worked well but this was all on one PC, not on multiples. It?s a bit of a kludge, which bugs me, but Adobe doesn't make this easy to do globally.

by t_bonee

Thanks for the ideas. I tried the re-install first for simplicity's sake and it worked.

by sgt_shultz

uh, this is a bag on it but i have some new certs that make me dangerous...how about creating a security group the a gpo that uses it to filter so that full acrobat is forbidden to them?
did you try installing reader AFTER acrobat?

by t_bonee

I thought of the same thing of reinstalling Reader after acrobat after I posted this. That took care of it. Thanks.

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