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Removing the Acrobat addin and toolbar from Outlook

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› Problems › Removing the Acrobat addin and toolbar from Outlook

Last reviewed on August 11, 2013     11 Comments

Tip: you can use this method to remove other toolbars, such as the Avery toolbar (AveryAddIn.Connect).

When you install Adobe Acrobat, a toolbar is added to Word and Outlook. This toolbar can prevent you from rearranging the toolbars in Outlook (your arrangement won't stick between restarts) and for most people, serves no useful purpose. You have three ways to deal with this:

  • Modify the setup to remove it
  • Edit the registry to keep it from loading
  • Edit the registry so you can toggle the toolbar off and on
Note: This toolbar is only installed by Adobe Acrobat which you purchased. The free Acrobat Reader does not install this toolbar.

Uninstall Acrobat optionsTo remove it from the computer completely, go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. Find the entry for Adobe Acrobat and choose Change, then select the option to Modify the installation.

Expand Create Adobe PDF and click on the Microsoft Outlook entry then choose This feature will not be available. If you want to remove the ability to create PDF from all of the programs listed, click on Create Adobe PDF and select This program will not be available to apply the option to each item under it.

Click Next and finish the Add/Remove wizard.

You may need to provide your Acrobat disk or installation media to uninstall it.

This will not affect your ability to print to PDF using the printer driver. This only removes the toolbars from the programs listed.

If you want to disable it, either because you may want to use it sometime or because you don't have the installation media handy, you'll need to edit the registry.

To prevent the Acrobat PDFMaker COM Addin from loading, browse to the following Local_Machine key and change

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook
LoadBehavior value: change from 3 to 2 or 0

Restart Outlook. When you use this method, the PDF functions will still be available in Word and the other Office programs. Note that installing Acrobat updates may reset the registry key.

You can remove the add-ins from other programs by editing a similar key, but it's generally better to use Add/Remove programs, because the keys are reset each time an update is installed.

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook
LoadBehavior value: change from 3 to 2 or 0

To hide the toolbar button, create the OutlVisible value:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\7.0\Outlook\EmailToPDF
Value Name: OutlVisible
Value: 0

More Information

Italian languageItalian Translation by Outlook MVP Roberto Restelli

Removing the Acrobat addin and toolbar from Outlook was last modified: August 11th, 2013 by Diane Poremsky

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About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Rob (@guest_221004)
March 27, 2024 1:49 pm
#221004

Bob, thank you for simplifying!!! Now I'm back to keeping it simple w/o the annoying plug in that wouldn't exit when "X'ed"!

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Bob Vonlutj (@guest_220842)
January 11, 2024 2:24 pm
#220842

Go to File/Options/Add-ins/Manage:/Go.../Uncheck undesirable Adobe Acrobat add-ins/OK

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Elisei Kulikovsky (@guest_218113)
May 5, 2021 11:00 am
#218113

Thank you. Uninstallation the module is the best solution for me. I hope it's permanent :) So after an Acrobat update these plug-ins won't be installed again.

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User (@guest_211492)
July 12, 2018 5:14 am
#211492

1st option i.e. 'Modify the setup to remove it' worked for me

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iphone6actumohammedi mohamed (@guest_189126)
February 8, 2015 4:23 am
#189126

Tankyou.

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Reply
Mally (@guest_179510)
September 25, 2013 1:56 am
#179510

SO FAST! Diane, you wonderful woman. Thanks for this immediately needed answer. I love that you share your wisdom. Keep on truckin!

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Shawn (@guest_172589)
November 26, 2012 2:38 pm
#172589

THANK YOU!!! I needed to uninstall the toolbar from MS Access, but doing so via Add/Remove Programs wasn't an option for me, unfortunately. I'm always wary of playing around in the regedit, so thanks for taking the time to write up this how-to. Couldn't have been easier, and worked like a charm!

One comment - You might edit it to state specifically what the difference between LoadBehavior Value 0 and 2 is. I gather that 0 disables altogether and 2 allows you to toggle on and off, but that was just my best guess based on what you said at the beginning. Just a suggestion. Thanks again!

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R Olson (@guest_154514)
July 24, 2012 9:40 am
#154514

For later versions of Acrobat (9.0 in my case) the solution is to replace the .dll file. The file in question:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\PDFMaker\Mail\Outlook\PDFMOutlook.dll

You cannot remove this file, Adobe just keeps putting a new one there. The Trick: What you can do is create a text file, rename it "PDFMOutlook.dll", and replace the real one with the spoofed one. When you launch Outlook, everything is fine.

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Diane Poremsky (@guest_154624)
Reply to  R Olson
July 24, 2012 1:52 pm
#154624

Replacing the dll with a text file probably works with all versions, but disabling it in the registry is generally better.

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Alexander Borg (@guest_215401)
Reply to  Diane Poremsky
June 11, 2020 4:05 am
#215401

No, because with Acrobat 9 you will not find the registry entry. Olsen's solution seems to be the only one that works

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