How can I install Acrobat 7.0 and 8.0 on the same desktop machine?

I've gotten this question a lot lately. The details change; sometimes it’s Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 7, or 6...even 5. The answer is always the same. Don't do it!

If two versions of Acrobat are installed on the same computer, only the higher version of Acrobat 's PDFMaker and Adobe PDF printer will be used and conflicts may occurs if multiple versions of PDFMaker are attempting to load into Microsoft Office applications. Additionally, Acrobat and Reader have several system level components that can cause conflicts that mostly involve the plug-ins or OCX controls for rendering PDF files in a browser.

Can I install the same version of Reader and Acrobat on a single machine?

Although you can install Acrobat 8.0 and Reader 8.0 on the same machine, as I have, there can still be issues. In a browser, only the one that’s running will be used to display PDF files regardless of which one opens when you double-click on a file. So if you want to view a PDF in the browser but need to control which PDF viewer the browser uses, start that version of the viewer first, and then launch your browser.

So, now that I’ve given you this advice, should you decide to uninstall one version or the other, please see the TechNote referenced below for details on how to do that and what the consequences could be.

TechNote 333223

A new TechNote article has been added to the Adobe Knowledge Base. This article describes how to install all of the Acrobat 8 patches all at once.

Acrobat 8 supports Patch Sequencing. This is a technology that lets the Windows Installer (among other things) to determine which order patches are applied and also allows patches to be applied during installation. Adobe Systems has provided the Adobe Bootstrapper (setup.exe) which can automate a lot of this.

Read the full article

Enable indexing of PDFs on your 64 bit Sharepoint Servers.

Adobe currently bundles a 32-bit PDF iFilter with Acrobat 8 and the free Adobe Reader 8. This uses the Microsoft iFilter interface and allows third party indexing tools to extract text from Adobe PDF files. However, currently this 32-bit PDF iFilter does not work on 64-bit systems.

In response to customer requests, Adobe is releasing this prerelease version of instructions and files which will allow a server administrator to configure the current 32-bit PDF iFilter to work on 64-bit systems, specifically Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition.

Download and Installation Instructions

More about Acrobat and Reader on 64 bit systems

You downloaded the Reader setup file. Now what?

Here's a single document detailing everything you need to know to deploy the Adobe Reader in your enterprise. This document discusses issues which should be considered before deployment, and it explains how to download and expand the compressed installer package.

Deploying Adobe Reader 8

TechNote: Extract the Adobe Reader 8 msi installer for enterprise deployment

Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard and Professional have a rich set of functions that allow users to collaborate with colleagues and more securely distribute documents and collect data from electronic forms. The Adobe Acrobat 8 family and the Adobe Reader are also the client applications for an array of document services hosted on servers either within your organization or at Adobe. With all of this functionality, IT managers often find that they need to customize the deployment of Acrobat based on the needs of different departments or to pre-configure settings to ensure a consistent user experience across the enterprise.

This on demand seminar will show you how.

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