Tobias's dashboard

Tobias replied on July 28, 2009 19:47 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

Philipp - sorry to hear you are still having issues with the system. I failed to realize that your last message included a question and now that I see it, I'm also not sure whether that's a problem with Office / Word.

All our products do have to meet certain quality criteria before they can be shipped. If there's doubt that those quality criteria have been met, the application will not be shipped. The same is true for Acrobat.

I think I'm not telling you anything new by saying that there are millions of software titles out there. Some of them are system intrusive and will alter the way that other applications behave (I believe you witnessed that yourself with system-protection, anti-virus software). It is impossible for a Quality Assurance department to test all possible combinations, which means there is certainly room for our applications (and other vendor's applications) to fail on a small percentage of systems.

I'm afraid that seems to be the situation in your case. This is supported by the fact that you said that everything was working initially and has stopped working some time in the past.

Philipp - I've run out of ideas on how to fix things for you. There are only a handful of people from Adobe on getsatisfaction and I doubt that you will get a lot more help here.

May I suggest that you post a message to the user forums at http://forums.adobe.com/ with a link back to this page on getsatisfaction? There are a lot more Adobe people viewing that forum and it's pretty likely that you get a positive response there.

Sorry that I was not able to help you - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 15, 2009 15:40 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

Philipp - thanks for adding the note about the missing "Adobe PDF" menu items. Funny enough one of the response I got from the internal mailing list also suggested to check the status of the Adobe PDF add-in.

I hate to say what I'm going to say, but at this point I would really suggest the uninstall of Acrobat followed by a clean reinstall. Make sure all Office applications are closed when you uninstall to make sure that the add-in is removed cleanly.

Thanks - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 14, 2009 19:25 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

Philipp - sorry to hear that the "Repair Installation" did not fix it for you. Were you ever able to transform Office documents to PDF on said system? Inside Word, Excel, Powerpoint do you see the "Adobe PDF" menu (which allows you to convert files to PDF from inside Office apps)?
I also sent a message to an internal mailing list to see if anybody else can offer clues ...

Thanks - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 14, 2009 13:00 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

Phil - this is odd that no MS formats show up when using the method thilgen above mentions. I just did the very same thing and I saw all my excel, word, powerpoint files appear in the file selection dialog.

The system where you try to do the batch conversion on, does it have all those MS Office apps installed? Acrobat needs the original applications to do the Office->PDF conversion. Each document will actually be opened in MS Office in order to translate the source document to PDF.

Can you verify that MS Office is installed on the system in question?

And, if the answer is Yes, would you mind going to "Help -> Repair Acrobat Installation" and see if that fixes your problems?

Thanks - T

Tobias replied on July 14, 2009 01:12 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

Philipp - your original message failed to indicate a platform (Mac/Win) and a version number of Acrobat Pro. In order to provide a speedy response, I opted to pick the most common platform (Win) as a basis for my first response. That was obviously wrong.

Would you please confirm your platform and version number for me?

Tobias replied on July 14, 2009 00:50 to the question "Batch processing of PDFs / converting MS Office files" in Adobe:

My "pro" version of Acrobat does batch operation, if I ask it to.

Two methods to start with:

1. using Explorer I select the source files I want to convert to PDF and drag'n'drop them onto Acrobat.exe


2. from the command line I invoke "...\Acrobat.exe" and supply each file I want to convert to PDF as arguments

In both cases I end up with all files converted and "savable" in Acrobat.

And another one if you have windows shell integration installed:

Multi-select the files you want to convert, hit the popup menu and select "Convert to Adobe PDF ..."; you'll be asked to save each file.

The are lots of other ways to do batch conversions, but those require that you actually do some coding and it does not look like you want to go that way.

Tobias replied on July 14, 2009 00:01 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Jeff - if possible, email me at thoellri-at-adobe-dot-com and I'll see if we can take this further. Cheers - T

Tobias replied on July 13, 2009 21:59 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

There needs to be a space between ".exe" and "-uninstall". It's easier if you do the following:

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Jeff Bowman\Desktop\"
AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -uninstall

Hope this helps - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 13, 2009 20:52 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Let's concentrate on item 3 for a moment. When you download the AdobeAIRInstaller.exe application, make a note of where the item is being downloaded to. Next open a "cmd.exe" window, "cd" to the location of the downloaded file and then execute "AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -uninstall" in the cmd-window.
For example, if your downloads end up in "c:\documents and settings\jeffb\downloads", you would open "cmd.exe" and then type the comment cd "c:\documents and settings\jeffb" followed by the command "AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -uninstall".

Can you try to do that?

Thanks - T

Tobias replied on July 13, 2009 18:44 to the idea "Missing "Preview" & "Save as draft" buttons / functionality" in Get Satisfaction:

Just wanted to add a "+1" to the comment preview idea: I know I can edit a newly posted comment for a while, but I would really like it to be "perfect" before the world can see it.

Thanks for considering it - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 13, 2009 18:42 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Jeff - sorry to hear that this did not fix it for you. Can we walk down the checklist to make sure we haven't skipped anything?

1. downloaded latest AdobeAIRInstaller.exe from http://get.adobe.com/air/?


2. tried to run above installer?


3. tried to run "AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -uninstall" followed by a normal run?


4. delete the "Common Files" entries, followed by deleting registry entries, again followed by a normal run of "AdobeAIRInstaller.exe"?

Can you confirm you ran those on your system without successs?

Would you also happen to recall when you installed AIR first on your system? Or did it come preinstalled?

Thanks - Tobias

Tobias replied on July 13, 2009 18:04 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Jeff - sorry for the late response - just saw your reply now.

Did you already try to use the MS cleanup utility mentioned above to get rid of all old AIR items on your system?

Cheers - T

Tobias replied on July 09, 2009 17:38 to the question "Does Air Require Aero to Run on Windows Server 2008?" in Adobe:

woohoo - that was almost too easy - thanks for giving it a try!

Tobias replied on July 09, 2009 17:18 to the question "Does Air Require Aero to Run on Windows Server 2008?" in Adobe:

Would you mind giving one of the other AIR apps a quick spin? See: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketpl... - want to make sure that it is not a general AIR problem, but we need to test other apps.

Thanks - T

Tobias replied on July 09, 2009 17:11 to the question "Does Air Require Aero to Run on Windows Server 2008?" in Adobe:

Just to clarify: that means that other AIR apps are working correctly? Only Tweedeck is giving you problems?

Tobias replied on July 09, 2009 17:04 to the question "Does Air Require Aero to Run on Windows Server 2008?" in Adobe:

is it any AIR application? or just a specific one? I'm not aware of any requirements that would ask for Aero on 2008 server.

Tobias replied on July 09, 2009 16:39 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

phew - we were pretty close to running out of ideas ;-)

Glad to hear it finally worked! Have fun.

Tobias replied on July 08, 2009 22:16 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Andrew - thanks again for providing the log file output. I talked to one of the AIR engineers and he suggested the following:

"Based on this, it looks like their Windows Installer database (registry entries, really) is hosed. That might not be the original problem, but it's almost certainly the issue at this point.

I recommend that you delete the files, as before, and also run Microsoft's cleanup utility (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/) to fix up the registry. Then try an install again."

Would you be able to perform those steps under 3) above again and try to use MS's cleanup utility to delete all references to Adobe AIR?

Sorry about all the trouble - really hope this fixes your issues.

Tobias replied on July 08, 2009 22:04 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Thanks Andrew - I'll talk to the AIR team ...

Tobias replied on July 08, 2009 21:03 to the question "Can not unistall AIR!" in Adobe:

Andrew - one more request: can you follow the instructions under the following URL, create an installer log file and make it available to me? http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403123... - my email is thoellri-at-adobe-dot-com