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02 June 2015

How to remove Tool Pane in Adobe Acrobat DC

Hello All

If you have installed Adobe Acrobat DC you will face this annoying problem of Tool Pane opening in the sidebar every time you open Adobe Acrobat. To remove it you have to either click 'Shift + F4' or go to View --> Show / Hide and deselect the Tool Bar option.

This is a standard feature of Acrobat DC.

How do you handle this.

A simple solution that I got in Adobe Forum by a user named 'tmmcentyre' is as follows.

Okay, seems I've stumbled upon an ugly workaround but it works for me. I'm using Windows 8.1. Go to the install directory, i.e." C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroApp\ENU". Create a new subfolder (I used "Disabled"). Move 3 files from the "ENU" folder into the new "Disabled" folder: AppCenter_R.aapp & Home.aapp & Viewer.aapp. Open a PDF and no more Tool Pane!  I originally moved just the "Viewer" file but if you clicked on "Home" or "Tools" on the toolbar you couldn't go back to the "Document." Moving all 3 files takes care of that issue. Like a lot of people I don't and won't ever use any of the tools. I just want a reader. Let me know if this works for you.

I tried it and it is working for me. 

Only problem is that you cannot open the Tool Pane again. I think I can live with that. 

Another, supposedly better solution is provided by the user 'HHugo' here

I edited the XML file "Adobe/Acrobat Reader DC/Reader/AcroApp/ENU/Viewer.aapp" to contain only this line:
<Application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/acrobat/app/2014" title="Viewer" id="Viewer" majorVersion="1" requiresDoc="true" minorVersion="0"/>

I tried it but I did not have permission to save the file in the Adobe Folder Group. I left it at that.
  


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

An easier way to toggle the Tool Pane ON/OFF is to click the 'TOOLS' item on the Tool bar below the Menu Bar. Press F8 to toggle display of the Tool Bar.
Please try this and update your post.

Ram's Blogs... said...

Hello Anonymous
I tried that. It did not work. I am on Windows 8. Could that be the reason. Also, the step that I mentioned avoids the requirement of toggle. However, flipside to my method is that I can't use Tools Menu at all.

Alex said...

Wow! it is so simple to remove Tool Pane in Adobe Acrobat DC.
Thank you for sharing this