If you use Office v. X or Office 2004 for Mac OS X, you are familiar with the Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker Toolbar. And as a Mac OS X user you are well aware that you can PDF in any application without the help of a stupid toolbar.
But did you know that if you used the Save as PDF, or the Virtual Printer installed with Acrobat 6 Pro, you get the same thing in less then half the time as using that Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker Toolbar. Yes, it is true. You can test it for yourself.
This Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker Toolbar exists if you have Acrobat 6 Pro installed, as I do. I, however, do not want to see that Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker Toolbar show up every single time I open up an Office app.
The real reason I hate that toolbar so much is because it keeps loading when I launch Word or Excel, it is wasted space. If you go to View > Toolbars and uncheck that toolbar, then quit, and relaunch, the toolbar shows up again. If you go to View > Toolbars > Customize Toolbars/Menus and delete the Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker Toolbar, quit, and relaunch, the toolbar magically shows up again. Even after saying that yes, I want to save the changes I made the the "PDFMaker.dot" file, whatever that is (you only get this warning in Word, not Excel).
If the PDF Maker Toolbar did not always re-spawn under the main toolbar (even if positioned to the right before quitting, closing the PDF Maker Toolbar before quit does not keep it closed either) I would be OK with it. It is a worthless palette on my screen but it is out of the way. Since it shows up the Standard Toolbar and above the document window, it is an annoyance (the PDF Maker Toolbar shows up between the Standard and Equation Toolbar in Excel). I like to be able to use the maximum resolution of my screen for my open documents.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - N/A
Annoying isnt it. Useless pesky PDF toolbar.
Thanks for the tip.
2 - Bob
THANK YOU!!!! I wasted an hour trying to fix it until I did a simple Google search and found your site.
3 - Lunatik
Adobe's customer support was most unhelpful on this issue. They are incredibly clueless. I mistakenly did a search on the Adobe website, and, as bad as their customer service is, their website support is even worse. Fortunately, this simple answer was here, and the problem is solved. Adobe, GET A CLUE!
4 - sharaf
i have a prob with office 2002 and pdfwriter 4.00
5 - Krofojed
I don't know about Mac, but in Windows, if you print to PDF virtual printer, you don't get links (web links and links produced by cross-reference option) in your PDF, which you do if you use the toolbar. Possibly toolbar has other advantages, so IMO it's quite worthwhile.
6 - Ryan
Thank you. Thank you so much. THANK YOU!
All I can say is thank you. You are a genious. You are close to God. I could have saved 48 hours of time if I would have found your site earlier
7 - b1
There is a god! I like Adobe Products, well damn, I use them every day but that toolbar has to be the single worst bit of programming the adobe guys have EVER done (well, maybe short of PageMaker) But anyway, thank you!!!!!
8 - Sean Kelly
THANK YOU!!!!!
Adobe clearly is just trying to keep their icons visible as some kind of marketing ploy, sacrificing the user experience as a result.
Thank heavens for your research on this.
9 - Josh Bryant
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
AHHH, I CAN'T SAY IT ENOUGH....
THANK YOU!
10 - Francois
You can add to your list a fifth file to delete :
username/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/PDFMaker
By the way, you can quicky get the list of all the five files to delete by typing "pdfmaker" in a Finder's window search box.
11 - Geoffrey Buhl
This hint has been extremely helpful. It has saved my from untold ire directed at that little horrible pdfmaker pallete. Thank you.
12 - I Hate Adobe!
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! for this PDF Maker removal tip. I did all the same things other users tried: deleting it from the Word Toolbar etc. I even tred fishing around the registry. Your tip did the trick.
13 - shakira
Yes, to add to those before me, you are wonderful to have found out how to delete that pesky pdf maker thing on toolbars everywhere that are so very annoying and make my toolbars too long with no room for critical elements that I actually use. I was so glad to read your directions. Thanks.
14 - jk
another huge thank-you
you expressed my thoughts exactly
15 - bryan
THANK YOU! This has got to be one of the most annoying word features eva!
16 - Jason
THANK YOU! You have saved my Mac, because now I won't succumb to rage and inevitable smash it over my knee in misdirected fury.
17 - Donald
Works with Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 and Microsoft Office 2004 too. Thanks for the hint (if only this stupid PDFMaker toolbar could be set to off or given a less annoying location ...)
18 - Carrie Cohill
Thank you for your confirmation that it is okay to delete these files. My files were in a different folder than you indicated. I did a search for "PDFMaker" as part of the file name in the Program Files folder. A whole slew of templates for MS Office came up and I deleted them all. What a relief to get rid of that message!
Thank you!
19 - JB Peterson
Thank you
I did delete all the pdfmaker files and that bloody toolbar has finally disappeared. As far as I am concerned, programming that was equivalent to theft. Desktop real estate is attention. Shame on Adobe for their cheap marketing ploy. They could have designed the icons so they fit neatly into another toolbar but, instead, chose to steal 3/8 of an inch from every user. Sad and second rate behavior from a good company.
20 - Karina
Hate to be repetitous - but THANKYOU!
It makes me ridiculously happy to open Word and not have that annoying toolbar pop up and knock my document down the screen. :)
21 - Stuart
LOL... I'm amazed to find blogs, articles, and so many other people after a fix for this on the net. Quite nice have that stupid toolbar gone.
I thought there might be a documented fix *somewhere* but not this level of exposure. :)
22 - Chris
Just like the rest of them, THANKS A MILLION!
I got so fed up with that stupid toolbar and now it's gone......GONE!!!!
Thanks again
23 - John Daniels
Thank you so much!
I cannot understand how companies can get away with such deceitful practices.
Reminds me of the QuickTime systray icon:-)
24 - Ken Edwards
Ahh, I hate that QT system tray icon. At least that was easier to disable! You just had to look in the Control Panel and switch it off.
25 - Mehmet
You're great. I have spent hours to get rid of that stupid toolbar before reading your tips. Thank you so much.