PDFMaker 4.0 and Office XP

[Jeff]

When launching Office XP applications, I'm receiving
error messages that my version of Adobe PDFMaker (part of
Adobe Acrobat)is not stable with Office XP. The error
message gives me three choices to proceed: more
information, continue, or disable. The "more information"
takes me to the MS Knowledgebase, where it says to either
download a patch from Adobe, or rename the pdfmaker
plugin files. Since I only have Acrobat 4.0, there is no
patch, so i renamed the pdfmaker files per instructions.
I'm still receiving the error message when lauching
Office XP applications even with all the pdfmaker files
renamed to .old. If I try to launch a second time, my
WinXP system crashes. I do not need to use acrobat in
Office XP applications, so disabling the plugin is
acceptable. Any other ideas on how to do this would be
appreciated.

 

[SA]

Jeff:

Word and Excel will try to launch any file that are located in their start
up folders regardless of the name or type of file when the application is
launched. The only way to stop this behaviour is to remove the files
(rather than renaming them) so you must delete the pdfmaker.dot file from
the StartUp directory and the pdfmaker.xla from the XLstart directory, both
directories being below the root Office directory.

HTH

Steve Arbaugh
MS Access MVP

 

[Guest]

Steve:

Per your instructions, I deleted(i.e., moved to another
drive) the pdfmaker.dot and pdfmaker.xla files from the
StarUp and XLstart directories, respectively, within both
the Office and Office10 folders. The OfficXP startup
folders are now empty. Unfortunately, the problem still
persists -- when I launch Word 2002, I still get the
error message. Something else must be triggering it. Any
other ideas? Thanks.

Jeff

 

[SA]

Jeff:

Then only other thing I can suggest is that you completely uninstall Adobe
Acrobat and then re-install but make sure that the Word and Office macros
are not installed.

Steve Arbaugh
MS Access MVP

 

[Jeff]

Thanks, Steve. I finally did find out what the problem
was. There is a pdfwriter.dot file buried in the WinXP
Documents and Settings folder. The file in that folder is
not searchable using WinXP Search (news to me --
apparently the Documents and Settings folder is not
searched as part of a file/folder search on the hard
drive). Renaming that file avoids it loading upon launch
of Word 2002.

Note: Acrobat 4.0 is inherently incompatible with Office
XP. This is acknowledged on both the Microsoft and Adobe
web support sites. The only option without upgrading
Acrobat to versions 5.05 or 6.0 is to disable it when
launching Word 2002 or other Office XP applications. A
reinstall of Adobe 4.0 probably will not help.

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

Thanks, Steve. I finally did find out what the problem
was. There is a pdfwriter.dot file buried in the WinXP
Documents and Settings folder. The file in that folder is
not searchable using WinXP Search (news to me --
apparently the Documents and Settings folder is not
searched as part of a file/folder search on the hard
drive).

Use the "Search system folders" and "Search hidden files and folders"
options when searching for program files

Note: Acrobat 4.0 is inherently incompatible with Office
XP.

I'm still using Acrobat 4.0.5 which has worked fine through Office XP and
now with Office 2003.

 

[Jeff]

Mike -- you are correct about the searching. I am
curious, however, about your use of Adobe 4.0.5 with
Office XP:

1. Are you referring to the Acrobat reader, or the full
version with the pdf writer?

2. If the latter, when launching Word 2002, did you get
an error message saying that the version of the Acrobat
pdf writer is unstable with Word 2002, with buttons for
more information, continue, or disable?

3. If the latter in item 1, and if you did not get an
error message (item 2) did Word 2002 launch Acrobat pdf
writer?

Jeff

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

Mike -- you are correct about the searching. I am
curious, however, about your use of Adobe 4.0.5 with
Office XP:

1. Are you referring to the Acrobat reader, or the full
version with the pdf writer?

Full Acrobat, not the reader. The reader can't really be used "with" Office,
since it doesn't accept non-PDF input.

2. If the latter, when launching Word 2002, did you get
an error message saying that the version of the Acrobat
pdf writer is unstable with Word 2002, with buttons for
more information, continue, or disable?

I've never seen such an error message.

3. If the latter in item 1, and if you did not get an
error message (item 2) did Word 2002 launch Acrobat pdf
writer?

I use PDFWriter from the Print dialog. I have no use for the macro add-ins.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Mike. Good idea! By getting rid of pdfwriter.dot,
I've avoided the macro problem. I'll give the pdfwriter
from the print dialog box a shot.

 

[Bernie]

I haven't encountered problems with Acrobat 4.0 and Word 2003 (yet), but
I have encountered problems with Excel 2003. If I only use one font
face in Excel then I can create a pdf file, but if any cell has a bold
typeface for instance, then Acrobat 4.0 hangs. I've been able to work
around that by setting printing to a postscript printer after first
setting that printer driver to write to a file. Acrobat Distiller can
then take that file and work with it.

Bernie