Why Files Open in Acrobat, Not Reader

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DocW
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:40 pm

Post by DocW »

Greetings,
I have both CS 3 and Reader 8 installed. When I use doPDF, the resulting file opens in Acrobat instead of Reader despite the fact that I have my system set to open .PDF files with Reader (Acrobat and the other components of CS3 take much longer to load).
Can you please advise how I can get the files created by doPDF to open in Reader rather than Acrobat?


Claudiu (Softland)
Posts: 1560
Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:19 am

Post by Claudiu (Softland) »

Probably you installed CS3 after reader, and it associated the pdf extension with cs3. Try right-clicking and selecting Open With for a pdf, and mark "always use this program to open this type of document" (or something similar it says for that option) and see if that works. If not I would recommend installing the newest version of Adobe Reader and maybe it will associate pdf by default with it.

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Melvin
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:09 pm

Post by Melvin »

Hi DocW,
I had a similar problem, and found a solution for Windows XP. First, I'll tell you my solution, and then I'll describe how I came up with that solution.
1) The solution is to modify your registry, specifically ...
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ AcroExch.Document.7 \ shell \ Open \ command
... to point to your Reader application, instead of Acrobat.
For example, I changed the entry to the following (I'm using Reader 9.1):
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7\shell\Open\command]

@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Adobe\\Reader 9.0\\Reader\\AcroRd32.exe\" \"%1\""
If you're using Reader 8.0, then you'll need to change the directory path of course, and you should verify your actual path since it could be different.
NOTE (an alternative workaround): Before I made this mod, I could also open Reader first before printing, and the document created by doPDF would be opened in Reader instead of Acrobat.
2) How did I know this? I used Sysinternals' Process Monitor to watch what doPDF is doing within the guts of Windows during a print, and this registry value is one that doPDF is accessing on my computer to determine which application to open.
I don't know if my fix will work on your machine, but I think it'd be worth a try. If it doesn't, you might try Process Monitor to see if your machine is using a different registry key to determine which app to launch.
WARNING: Please be sure to backup your registry, or at least export HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7 before modifying this key. With this key exported to a file before you make this mod, you'll have the ability to restore the registry to it's previous value.
Hope this helps!

Melvin
P.S. I had tried changing the .pdf file association, but it didn't make any difference. Plus, I have a really old version of Acrobat, and have installed and updated Reader many times since Acrobat was installed. Finally, the AcroExch.Document.7 key is not accessible through the Window's File Types.


Claudiu (Softland)
Posts: 1560
Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:19 am

Post by Claudiu (Softland) »

Excellent tutorial Melvin, I moved it to the Tutorials section.

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