Acrobat Reader tips & tweaks

Via an intra-office circular via Nik these handy tweaks to having Acrobat Reader behave better. Both of our edits included.

In C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader:

Find the "plug_ins" folder and rename it something like plug_ins_disabled".

Create a new folder named "plug_ins".

Copy the following files from "plug_ins_disabled" to "plug_ins":
EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api

It will now load almost instantly.

Now that it's loaded, Edit > Preferences

General: Enable text selection for Hand tool
Internet: Display PDF in browser - er, that would be no, thanks
Startup: Display Splash screen? Also hell no.
Likewise Show Messages (which cancels the annoying rotating pastel ads in the top-right of the toolbar).
Units: I don't like inches. You might not either.

I've really come to dislike having PDFs display in the browser and I'm really glad it's possible to switch it off. In Firefox the plugins seem to haphazardly take over the browser's key-binding, e.g. Ctrl-K and Ctrl-T, two extremely useful keystrokes that are grabbed by Adobe Reader. And now they're back, woo hoo!