Fix: Adobe Acrobat won’t Open

Adobe Acrobat is a commercially available variant of Acrobat Reader and it includes many enterprise content management and files hosting services in addition to the basic features of the Acrobat Reader. However, quite recently, a lot of reports have been coming in where users are unable to open PDF files using the applications. The cursor refreshes for a while and then nothing happens.

In this article, we will guide you with viable solutions to completely eradicate this problem. Also, we will provide you with the reasons due to which this error is triggered.

What Prevents Adobe Acrobat from Opening?

There are several reasons due to which the application might face issues during the launch. Some of the most common ones are:

Now that you have a basic understanding of the nature of the problem we will move on towards the solutions. Make sure to implement these in the specific order in which they are provided to avoid any conflicts.

Solution 1: Resetting Acrobat Preferences Settings

It is possible that the Acrobat preferences have been configured in such a way that they are interfering with certain elements of the operating system due to which the application is not launching. Therefore, in this step, we will be reinitializing all Acrobat preferences to default.

For Windows:

1. Restart your computer to close all instances of the “Acrobat” application.
2. Open “File Explorer” and navigate to the below path for Windows 7 or newer.

   C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\[version]

   

3. Open “My Computer” and navigate to the below path for Windows XP

   C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\[version]

4. Delete the “Preferences” folder located in the folder.
5. Start the application and check to see if the issue persists.

For MacOS:

1. Close Acrobat.
2. Navigate to

   Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences

3. Drag the following files to the desktop

   1. "Acrobat WebCapture Cookies"
   
   2. "com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist or com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro_x86_9.0.plist"
   
   3. "Acrobat Distiller Prefs and com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist"
   
   4. "The Acrobat folder, which contains preferences for forms (MRUFormsList), collaboration (OfflineDocs), and color settings (AcrobatColor Settings.csf)"

4. Restart Acrobat and check to see if the issue persists.

Solution 2: Reinstalling Acrobat

It is possible that the Acrobat’s installation has been corrupted due to which the application is facing issues during the launch process. In this step, we will be completely uninstalling the Adobe Acrobat Reader and installing it again after downloading from the official site.

For Windows:

1. Download Adobe Acrobat Cleaner tool from here.
2. Install it by executing the downloaded executable.
3. Open the “AdbeArCleaner.exe” by double–clicking on it.

   

4. Click on “next” to verify that you want to continue.

   

5. Click on “Accept” to verify the “EULA“.

   

6. Choose “Acrobat” and click on “Next”.

   

   • If the product to be cleaned is installed on the machine, the tool directly proceeds to clean up.
   • If the product is not found, then Acrobat/Reader is cleaned from the default installation location at ProgramFilesFolder\Adobe\Acrobat *.* folder. The user is also given an option to select and add any other additional installation.
7. If there are more than one applications associated with the cleaner, chose the ones that you want to delete and also select if you want to clean the files shared by Acrobat and other Adobe software.
8. Click on “Clean Now” to start the cleaning process.
9. Restart the machine after the uninstallation finishes.
10. Download Adobe Acrobat from here.
11. Install the application and check to see if the issue persists.

For MacOS:

1. Quit Adobe Acrobat.
2. Run the “Uninstaller” file of Adobe Acrobat from

    Applications>Adobe Acrobat>Acrobat Uninstaller

   

3. Follow the onscreen instructions to completely remove it from the machine.
4. Restart the machine after the uninstallation process finishes.
5. Download Adobe Acrobat from here.
6. Install it on the machine and check to see if the issue persists.