Documents *.pdf (adobe Pdf) Not Listed

[Francoise Witsell]

Ihave uninstalled Adobe and ran the Acro Cleaner tool as well and reinstalled Adobe Acrobat DC Pro with the latest update and I am still not able to restore the Document\*.pdf port for the Adobe PDF printer. The printer gets installed but defaults to the COM1 port in the printer properties. We are a subscriber paying for this product and have contacted Adobe support multiple times and it seems to be useless. Does anyone know a good fix for this?

Came here to say exactly this. I never really cared before because the PDFs would be printed, and I'd just have to clear the queue every so often. I have also tried a repair and a complete remove/reboot/reinstall to no avail.

I work for a tax firm, and this is one of our most heavily used pieces of software. It breaks FREQUENTLY. I often have to engage in early morning repair-installs or even remove and replace to get it working as expected (btw, I noticed this morning that repair or installing will remove you from TS install mode. Not cool.) Yesterday, the PDF printer just broke on one of my servers. Wouldn't print, even though everything looked good. I noticed it had been renamed to Adobe PDF (Copy), which was a big red flag. Turns out that normal users can install updates for PDF, why that is I have no idea and haven't investigated, because usually a repair install fixes it. That is, until the hundreds to thousands of document pile up in the spooler.

It would seem that the updater specifically removes the existing PDF printer and replaces it with the broken one using the COM1: port. I tested this theory by removing and reinstalling, and before applying ANY update the Adobe PDF printer port was correct.

I tried applying the update from within acrobat (Check for Updates) and that broke the printer port. I tried re-downloading the package and installing the update from the included .MSI file, that broke the printer port. I removed the printer before applying the update, that broke the printer.

In my case, the Adobe PDF (Copy) came about because a user either was able to or forced the update to go through between my usual check window, and because the print spooler is usually full of PDFs it couldn't delete the printer like normal, so it sat there in limbo until the queue was cleared. Then the original printer went away and the new one was able to be renamed.

Anyway, I don't see any immediate way to fix this. I have a secondary PDF printer loaded on my servers (PDF reDirect v2) and that works well enough when things like this happen. Perhaps it will be better when I get up to 2016 or later, but I cannot say for sure.

Thank you for all this information. The accounting/tax firm I work for is also encountering this odd Adobe PDF printer issue on our Windows 2012 R2 Server. It seems to occur when Adobe Acrobat Pro DC runs an update but I am not absolutely certain yet. Adobe's support fixes do not work. So our staff work around this by using the Save as PDF instead. It requires a few extra steps and they are not familiar with the options but it does allow for them to continue working.

We have an IT contractor who had "fixed" this once before but another update came today. So, I will enlist them again and have them explain to us how it was fixed then try to come up with a long term solution. I feel like there is more to this because our Adobe PDF printer is often in an 'Error' state but we are able to continue printing. Much of this is way over my head but I am learning as I go. This may prove helpful: -terminal-server-printing-pdf-s-server-2012-r2-adobe-r...

Quite possible that "the fix" is to just do a fresh install and disable updates. Not ideal, but better than having to script clearing the printer queue every few hours and having users constantly mention that the PDF printer is in the "Error" state.

Well after a fresh install and assigning a port that works we are working again. Automatic updates have been disabled. Really curious as to why the printer port titled Adobe PDF (listed as Documents\*.pdf) is missing and cannot be added back.

I am suddenly having the same issue on Server 2012 R2 as well. I have uninstalled and reinstalled after a reboot but still has not fixed the issue. Our work around is to Save to PDF or we have another PDF printer available which is a workaround.

The original Adobe Acrobat DC install works fine. As soon as its patched or updated the "Documents\*.pdf" port gets removed and the Adobe "Printer" is assigned to a COM port as described in the original post. Reparing install does not work. The only thing that works is reinstalling the original without any patches or updates, bet we require an update in order for a certain redaction feature to work.

You can also set a script to automatically clear the print queue every night. That's what I did, and didn't seem to have any negative consequences. Sometimes people would complain that there were "documents stuck in the queue", but I would just tell them to ignore that if they received the PDF they were printing (which they did in ALL cases).

I continued testing in the meantime and I think I found a fix. In the Adobe Printer properties, instead of using Com 4 as the port (which is what it gets set to as default when you patch / update Adobe) I set the port to "Null Port" . That seems to work. Looking through these posts again I noticed someone else posted this as a solution also. I will continue to test, if it fails at some point ill post an update.

I totally understand about the users complaining. Hahah. I know if we told the users a work around, or let them know to ignore any warning/error messages, they would still harass us to no end with questions and panic emails.

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