Workspace - Customize views

Workspace - Customize views

Customize views

Change Display themes

You can change the overall look and feel of your Acrobat application by changing the display themes. To choose the theme, go to the hamburger menu   > View > Display theme, and then select one of the following themes:

  • System Theme - Acrobat changes the UI as per the OS theme. If the OS theme is changed while Acrobat is running, then Acrobat’s theme also gets updated.
  • Light grey - This is the default theme. All the UI elements and the document background appear light gray.
  • Dark grey -  It improves visual ergonomics by reducing eye strain, improves screen usage in dark environments, and saves battery. The dark theme is now extended to include the top menu, on-page context menu, scroll bar, and comments pane.

Customize Quick action toolbar

When you open a document in Acrobat, it displays a Quick action toolbar that allows you to quickly access the frequently used tools. 

Quick actions toolbar in work on PDFs in Adobe Acrobat desktop application.

A. Select tool B. Comment tool C. Highlight tool D. Draw tool E. Fill text fields F. Add Sign or Initials 

You can change the tools that appear on the Quick action toolbar as per your specific requirements.

To customize the Quick action toolbar: 

  1. From the Quick action toolbar, select Add, remove, or reorder tools   > Customize.

    Customize quick actions toolbar

  2. In the Customize quick action toolbar dialog that opens, take the following actions as required:

    • To add a tool, select the tool in the right pane and then select Add to Toolbar 
    • To remove a tool from the toolbar, select the tool and then select Remove from Toolbar 
    • To change the position of a tool, select it and use up and down arrows to move it to the desired position. 
    • To add a vertical line to separate groups of tools in the toolbar, select Add Divider to Toolbar
    Customize the quick actions toolbar by adding or removing tools.

Customize side panels

Acrobat allows you to customize the side panel menus to view the tools that you want to quickly access while working on a document. To customize the side panels, use any of the following two ways:

  • Right-click on the side panel and then from the dialog that opens, select the tools that you want to view or deselect the tools that you want to hide.
  • (Windows) hamburger menu   > View > Show/Hide > Side panels or for (macOS) View > Show/Hide > Side panels and select the tools you want to view and deselect the ones you want to hide.

customize-side-panels

Unlike the menus that appear at the top of your screen, Context menus display commands related to the active tool or selection. You can use context menus as a quick way to choose commonly used commands. For example, when you right-click the side panel, it displays the side panel customizing menu. When you right-click on the document, it displays the document context menu, as shown below. 

Context menu of a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat

Note

(Mac OS) If you don’t have a two-button mouse, you can display a context menu by pressing the Control key as you click with the mouse.

Navigate through pages

You can easily navigate through pages using the navigation tools that appear at the bottom of the right panel. They allow you to have quick access to the navigation buttons.

  • You can use the up and down arrows to navigate through the pages.
  • To jump to a page, type the desired page number in the box.
  • To rotate the page, select the rotate icon.
  • To change the page display settings, select Display the page at 100% magnification  and then select the desired tool. 

Buttons at the top of the side panel provide access to tools such as Page Thumbnails , Bookmarks , Comments , and more. 

When you select a tool, it appears in a column on the left side of the work area. You can change the width of the navigation pane by dragging its right border.

Note

The creator of the PDF can control the contents of some navigation panels and may make them empty.

Set preferences

You can go to hamburger menu  (Windows) or Acrobat (macOS) in the upper left and then select Preferences to change settings for display, tools, conversion, signatures, performance, and more. 

In the Preferences dialog, under Categories, select the type of preference you want to change. Once you set preferences, they remain in effect until you change them.

Restore (re-create) preferences

Restore the Acrobat preferences files in Windows

Restore the Acrobat Preferences folder to eliminate problems that damaged preferences cause. Most preference problems are caused by these file-based preferences, although most Acrobat preferences are stored within the registry.

Note

This solution removes custom settings for Collaboration, JavaScripts, Security, Stamps, Color Management, Auto Fill, Web Capture, and Updater.

  1. Quit Acrobat.

  2. In Windows Explorer, go to the Preferences folder:

    • (Windows 10, 8, or 7) C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\[version]

    Note

    In Windows 10 or 8, if you cannot see the AppData folder, click the View menu on the ribbon in Windows Explorer and select the Hidden items check box under Show/Hide.

  3. Move the Preferences folder to another location (for example, C:\Temp).

  4. Restart Acrobat.

If the problem recurs after you restore the Acrobat Preferences folder, then the problem isn’t related to the Preferences folder. To restore custom settings, drag the folder you moved in step 2 back to its original location. Then click Yes To All to replace the new Preferences folder.

Restore the Acrobat preferences files in Mac OS

In case you are facing problems due to a damaged preferences file, you can restore the Acrobat preferences files to get the default settings. To do so:

  1. Quick the Adobe Acrobat application.

  2. Drag the following files from the Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences folder to the Desktop:

    • Acrobat WebCapture Cookies

    • com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist or com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro_x86_9.0.plist

    • Acrobat Distiller Prefs and com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro.plist (if you are troubleshooting an issue with Distiller)

    • The Acrobat folder, which contains preferences for forms (MRUFormsList), collaboration (OfflineDocs), and color settings (AcrobatColor Settings.csf)

  3. Restart the application.

If the problem recurs after you restore the Acrobat preferences files, then the problem isn’t related to the preferences files. To restore custom settings:

  1. Drag the files you moved in Step 2 back to their original location.
  2. For the alert “A newer item named ‘[filename]’ already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you're moving?”, select Ok.
  3. Select the hamburger menu  (Windows) or Acrobat (macOS) > Preferences.
  4. Under Categories, select the type of preference you want to change.

Try these online PDF tools: convert Word to PDF, convert Excel to PDF, convert PowerPoint to PDF, convert JPG to PDF

Sign out Acrobat

  1. (Windows) From the upper-left, select the hamburger menu   > Help > Sign Out.

    (macOS) From the upper left, select Help > Sign Out.

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