This post is many days coming. I’ve been fighting with Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) for some time now, and I wanted to make sure my frustrations are not simply ill tempered rants, but actual problems that other people face. Also, this post is a tacit apology to all my non-Mac using friends who complained when I sent them PDF files. I now know the pain they had to suffer every time I sent a PDF to them, and expected it to be as easy as using Preview.app on the Mac.

First things first. There’s only one reason I can think of that any sane Mac user would ever install Adobe Reader on his or her system willingly is to be able to fill out PDF’s that have the built in forms. And no, for the record, I don’t count having the Creative Suite puking files, programs and browser extensions all over Hell and Creation to be a “willing” install of Adobe Reader. The forms are things like the yearly IRS Tax forms we get as US Citizens, and are required to fill out and mail in. It’s so much easier to fill out the forms on the computer, print them out, sign them, and then mail them in. Not only does it save the IRS from the handwriting of people like me, it allows people to save the filled out versions on their hard drives for long term storage.

I am dealing with one such form with my new employer. My desktop at work is a Linux box. I’ve got no problems with Linux – even though I’m much more comfortable with Mac OS X – and in every way the system is setup for what I need to do. Other than, apparently, reading PDF files. KPDF is installed, and when I try to open the PDF, I get a message – from Adobe, embedded into the document – that I need to install Adobe Reader to be able to view this PDF. Dutifully, I go to Adobe’s site, download the RPM, fire up Adobe Reader, open the document, and fill it out.

Then, I try to print. It tells me that an “unspecified error” has occurred. Doing some searching online, it seems that the permissions within the PDF prevent me from printing – because it wasn’t explicitly granted. I then download the current Adobe Reader and install it on my borrowed MacBook Pro. When I first open it, the Adobe Updater program runs – wanting to update itself, and then wanting to download and update Adobe Reader. Wait a minute – I just downloaded the software! What Adobe has told me at this point is that they can’t be bothered to put the current version of Reader on their website. Anyway, I fire up the PDF in Reader. And I’m told when I’m trying to print that “There were no selected pages to print”. Looking at Adobe’s support forums, the suggestion on Mac OS X was to uninstall Reader, apply the combo updater for OS X, and then reinstall Reader. Of course, you can’t do this if you have a current version of the OS installed. And really, what kind of PDF display technology requires major system updates to be performed in specific ways?

Unfazed, I trudge on. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, both of which I find out are useless. The first is the old standby, “Save As…”. I planned to save it as a simple PDF (one that doesn’t allow edits). This fails, due to the protections on the PDF. The other is the “Print To PDF” feature in OSX – which is present system wide in the print dialogue box. This has gotten me out of a number of jams in the past. This time? Reader tells me “You cannot use this feature – please use ‘Save As…’ instead.” Well, I already tried that. I wound up sending the PDF to a coworker who was running Windows and had them print it out.

Yes, I had to have a Windows user print out the document. Which printed just fine. I have since uninstalled Adobe Reader from my systems, and won’t ever put it back on.