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Adobe Acrobat Toolbar Worse than Malware?
Phr3n3tik writes "Adobe Acrobat has long included a toolbar plugin to automate PDF Making from Office Products. Those who found the toolbar an eyesore, or just used it infrequently could always hide it from view. Not so in their new versions, (6, and 7 apparently.) Their new take on the PDFMaker toolbar is getting some users riled up, since it is harder to Move/Hide/Delete/Uninstall this new toolbar than many forms of malware!"
Don't install it if you don't want it? I don't think you need to add the toolbar.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I haven't used Acrobat 4 for quite a long time. However I cannot find a way to remove the PDF toolbar even after I have removed the software completely from my machine.
It is dangerous to be right on a subject on which the established authorities are wrong. - Voltaire
I'm trying to stick with 5 since it works and the other versions are getting too feature rich.
A Brit in Tallahassee.
I mean geez I try not to bitch about the dupes and crappy stories that get posted here, but man is this a non-story.
t or/
btw a good free pdf creatore for windows.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcrea
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
By asking whether or not it is worse than malware, you are implying it is harmful. However, in the very end, you suggest that it is only worse in the sense that you can't get rid of it. That is very misleading.
A blog like any other.
I can remove the toolbar (Acobat Pro 6) from all the office products I just tried (only word and excel). The first link in this story is something about Visio, which is an add-on to office i think. I don't have that product, so I can't say. The other post is for office for mac osX, so I can't say there either. But the problem doesn't seem to be as big as the write-up suggests, surprised?
Instructions
Worked for me!
My userid is prime!
One of the nicest features of OS X is the ability to turn just about any darn thing into a PDF. Rather than spend the money on this just go out and buy a Mac. Of course you can't turn this feature off in OS X, so maybe my OS is malware too.
How can you tell in the MS office suite? The whole thing's got so many sliding panels, animated dogs saying "it looks like you're trying to get some work done." and other crap too numerous to list... I can't imagine one more toolbar being noticable.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Adobe toolbar, what's that? I just hit "Save to PDF" on any print dialogs...
I refuse to use anything newer than version 5 of Acrobat. They completely and totally fucked up the product after this release.
On the other hand, it really shouldn't be this difficult to remove valid programs - MS should really step in here and mandate a total-removal tool. Something that wipes ALL THE BLOODY FILES and icons from the HDD.
Of course, unless its IE, MS has never really believed in standards for the good of the end user - just for the good of the bottom line (WMA anyone???)
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
... Adobe has taken the Real approach to software.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If it weighs as much as a duck, and made of wood, it's a witch.
If it can't be uninstalled through the standard add/remove programs thing then it's malware. Plain and simple. The only reason not to let your users remove you is if you're deliberately doing something they don't want.
I am trolling
I guess the best way to avoid this is to not install MS Office and use OpenOffice instead :-)
Its annoying in Word 2004 for Mac.. always there in the toolbar. Also, its shit becuase if you've got Acrobat 7 installed, any pdf's you view in Safari have to open Acrobat first, no matter how many times you tell it to 'always open with preview'. Bugger.
But people use XXX Teen Search Buddy whereas they don't use the Acrobat toolbar.
Or maybe it was a mistake to allow Microsoft to get away with that?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Adobe is clearly filling a market need with their product. As pioneers they can, of course, charge premium rates for their commercial-grade Malware. They have to recoup the costs of conducting psychological studies on the most brain-corroding toolbar scheme imaginable. These things cost money, you know. It is wholly unreasonable to ask Adobe to develop such brain-mangling software and shoulder the research costs involved.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Does this mean that even uninstalling Acrobat itself won't remove the said toolbar?
If does, then I understand whining about it. Not otherwise.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
This article is ridiculous. I've been a user of (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) Adobe's toolbar and I have never seen any (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) evidence of being infected with any sort of adware (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) or malware.
I'm a big tall mofo.
True, not being able to get rid of a simple toolbar is not exactly malware-worthy.
But let's face it, not being able to customize your own personal environment can be pretty frustrating.
Imagine having a stack of papers on your desk that could never be removed, no matter what you did. Dang man. That'd drive me nuts!
BTW, this discussion of permanent toolbars kind of reminds me of the invasive qualities of AOL. Ever try to get that junk off your PC? It's worse than a virus!
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
I disagree. The only thing it's doing is making it difficult for the user to remove the toolbar, which is contrary to malware, whose sole purpose is to do some sort of *actual* harm, not simply perceived harm from one's inability to get rid of it. Maybe it's annoyware? ;)
A blog like any other.
On OS-X, at least, it installs itself automatically when doing an Acrobat Reader installation. I had to manually uninstall it from the Internet Plug-ins folder in order to use the significantly faster Schubert PDF Browser Plugin .
i thought, therefore i was...
I wouldn't mess with it anyway. You can use Ghostscript. And you can used the modified primo pdf from active pdf. it's a free PDF creator.
http://www.primopdf.com
works great. one time it will ask you for personal info after you make like 25 pdfs, but you can just push the cancel button if you don't want to give them any statistical information. It appears as a printer on your computer. I use it, it's great.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Search your hard drive for "PDFMaker.dot" or probably anything else withe PDFMaker in the name. On my machine it installs it here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\STARTUP
That will get rid of it in all your Office apps including Outlook.
Keep in mind that this isn't a "toolbar" along the lines of the Yahoo! toolbar or Google toolbar. This is one of the toolbars that only appears in Office apps. It provides three "Convert to PDF" buttons. It doesn't log anything. It doesn't track anything. It simply converts documents to PDF when you click it.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
You need to select print to save? That's intuitive... err, I think.
Uncheck this:
Edit>Preferences>Startup>Show Messages and automatically update
The banner goes away, and, as a bonus, if you have auto-update disabled, the stupid app stops tickling the network too.
C'mon gentlemen, this is not worth a slashdot article. Next time start your engines before flooring the pedal.
What is wrong with complying to "uninstall" standards? Or better yet have a checkbox when it runs that tells it to scram or to never pop-up or run again?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
For those that don't know... it's a windows printer driver that makes PDFs of your document when you print to it... very handy.
Next on Slashdot, how to remove the MSNMessenger icon from your system tray!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Adobe is a company that just doesn't care that its products fail to adhere to common WIndows GUI guidelines *. I doubt they care about this. One example is their brain-dead "Save A Copy" function. That's just not "Windows", and what it does could have been handled with "Save As". Maybe it's Mac-like and they're trying to retain cross-platform look-and-feel but it just doesn't "feel" like WIndows and that goes for Acrobat, Photoshop, Premiere, etc. When it comes to the user interface they don't care so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to "fix" something they don't feel is broken.
* other offenders: Macromedia, Autodesk products. You realy notice when a program requires your UI neural pathways to shift gears.
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328399.html
For Mac:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/329307.html
Annoying, but at least they show you how to get around the reappear/reinstall/undeletable garbage the toolbar usually subjects you to.
Yep, saw that... if you're not paying attention after the Adobe downloader finishes getting the three different install files (Adobe Photo Album, Yahoo Toolbar and of course the Acrobat Reader) and you answer Yes suddenly you've got stuff you never wanted or needed on your system and it's hard to get rid of.
Someone else mentioned that Acrobat products after 5 have sucked bad and from what I've seen I'd have to agree.
This is really getting out of hand, next thing you know there'll be sneakwrap / EULA crap saying as a condition of using "our" software you must install our adware / spyware / malware so that you can be bombarded by advertising while we monitor what you do with our software on your computer.. oh and by the way by installing our software you're computer now belongs to us..
"By Grapthar's Hammer, avenged you shall be!"
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Adobe toolbar, what's that? I just hit "Save to PDF" on any print dialogs...
Would that be with the right or left mouse button?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
(posting anonymously to save my ass)
This article is 100% bullshit.
If you actually search the support documents, you can find instructions for removing PDFMaker. Or, if you're doing a first-time installation, you can just do a custom installation and *gasp* tell it not to install PDFMaker to begin with!
What made version 6.0 and 7.0 annoying is the "self-heal" feature that would put the PDFMaker files back after you deleted them. However, if you use the custom install approach, the self-heal will not put PDFmaker back.
Trivia: I personally have spoken with people who either want PDFMaker gone or want it back. The latter grossly outnumber the former.
Old & busted: programs that had Windows systray icons you couldn't turn off, nor did you need
New hotness: programs that have a web browser toolbar you can't uninstall.
Recent versions of Acrobat reader and writer which have come with other Adobe products and which I use for testing are really annoying. They hook into Word. They hook into Safari. They integrate with numerous apps by adding buttons and toolbars. It is really bothersome. On OS X, why do I need an extra button in Word That tries to sell me Acrobat Writer. It's not like Word on OS X can't already make PDFs. Also, Acrobat reader is much slower than Preview and grinds the browser to a halt while trying to open PDFs inline. That is half the reason PDFs suck so badly on Windows. Worse yet, recent version of reader on OS X silently fail to open some PDFs. Adobe needs to get their act together.
This is a symptom of the overall personality of the Adobe software. You install it on your machine and it throws it's weight around like an 800 lb gorilla. It's disgusting the number of files folders and registry keys it creates. You'd think the the sole purpose in life of your computer was to be the home of this software. At least Adobe seems to think so. Well, being that pdf is an open standard format, there are many many free implementations of readers, editors, converters etc. out there. For plain old viewing of pdfs I use and recommend Foxit pdfReader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php It's very handy, fast, and not bloated. I for one will never let adobe get its meat hooks into my computer again.
Yes the visio version of the bar is right PITA.
The toolbars are dead easy to remove.
This is why I use Acrobat 5. No bloated features, but still lots of functionality. Does anyone else love the fact that Mac OS X can produce PDFs without having to install ANY Adobe products?
Frankly I think anything that doesn't provide an easy means of uninstalling should be considered malware. And even if you don't consider it malware for the fact it won't uninstall, it's a pain in the neck when you try to hide the toolbar and it reappears each time you start word, or it positions itself wherever the hell it likes.
And another gripe with Acrobat is that it wants to leave a service running all the time. I might create a PDF once every three months. Why should I need a service running in the background the rest of the time? And if you terminate the service some of the PDF functionality just stops working - no explanation, no attempt to restart the service. It just fails. It's ok for a technically savvy user who can recognise what's going and knows to start/stop it when they want. But for Joe Average he won't realise.
I continually get asked to "fix" friends PCs and they're running umpteen little background services/apps that get used maybe once a month, or less. Yet they all want to stay resident all the time as though the users want to use them every hours of every day.
I wish application vendors would provide options to (un)load these things on demand. Let me choose whether I use Acrobat so much that I want to have that service running all the time. And if I don't then when I want to make a PDF it takes me a few extra seconds while the service loads.
Rant over sorry :)
Oh no no no... it does plenty of things.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the registry during the whole week before I killed it. And every night about midnight I turned on the back door and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my edits, I put in a dark comment, commented so that no bits came out, and then I thrust in my command. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the backups. It took me an hour to place my whole script within the opening so far that I could see the library as it lay within its folder. Ha! Would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my script was well in the folder I executed it cautiously -- oh, so cautiously -- cautiously (for the hard drive creaked), I launched it just so much that a single thin electron fell upon the vulture toolbar. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the toolbar always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the toolbar that vexed me but this Evil Icon. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into my applications and spoke courageously to them, calling them by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how they had passed the night. So you see it would have been a very profound program, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon the toolbar while it slept.
I had my head in, and was about to open the folder, when my pinky slipped upon the enter key, and the program sprang up in the toolbar, crying out, "MAKE PDF?" And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? With a loud yell, I threw open the script and leaped into the registry. It err'd once -- once only. In an instant I dragged it to the trash, and emptied it quickly. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.
Yet, upon the next reopening, first and formost it mocks me. It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness -- all a dull grey with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of document's font or margin, for I had directed my sight as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.
I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury, but the toolbar remained. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and bounced upon my cube, but the toolbar arose over all applications and continually increased. It spawned over -- over -- over! And still the office chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they saw not? Almighty God! -- no, no? Adobe saw! -- Adobe suspected! -- Adobe KNEW! -- they were making a mockery of my horror! -- this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical responses no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! -- and now -- again -- hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! --
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the registry! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous icon!"
With profound apolgies to Poe, this is the truth of that toolbar.