Help with computers...

[ealuscerwen]

Can any of the people who read my journal and know more about computers than me (approx. 100%) think of a way to make Acrobat open so that I can read a .pdf internet file when clicking on it? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Comments

[wimble]

Try going to "Add or Remove Programs" in the control panel, and you will (hopefully!) see Acrobat in the list. Click on the "Change/Remove" link, and it should allow you to either repair, or remove Acrobat completely. You want repair.

At least, I hope that works. That's the sequence I get for Acrobat 5 or 6 under XP. (That's another option: if you're running Acrobat 5, then uninstall it, and download Acrobat 6 from Adobe. 'Course, that's badnwidth dependant.)

[bateleur]

Actually it's quite possible that Acrobat won't appear in the list. Scary-2, for example (Win98 machine) does not have Acrobat installed, only the Internet Explorer plugin.

[bateleur]

Incidentally, going to:

Settings -> Folder Options -> File Types

And associating PDF with Acrobat may help (if you have Acrobat installed).

If you don't then, as wimble says, you're looking at a large download (8MB) !

[condign]

If Acrobat's installed, it's already made itself the default program at least once. Every time I've ever seen this happen, one of two things has been the problem:

a) The program itself was corrupt, and needed fixing.

b) Version compatibility was the problem. Old versions of Acrobat, whatever Adobe says, will not always open PDFs made with newer versions. I'd recommend biting the bullet and, if you don't have the latest version of Acrobat reader, download it and install. It's a pain in the arse, but so are PDFs in general.

[phlebas]

I've often found problems viewing PDFs like that anyway - Acrobat tends to freeze after a couple of pages, and when you get rid of it it kills any browser windows you have open. So I usually save the files locally and view them there.

[ealuscerwen]

Thank you for your advice, people. I'm now back at the computer from which I sent the query. The downloading a new version sounds sensible!

Eal.