Multiple versions of Acrobat on same system?

[Diane Gaskill]

Dov,

Amazing.  You described the exact problem we are concerned about at my
company (and why I left Acrobat 5 on my system).  We are using Acrobat 7 but
set the compatibility to Acrobat 6 in case some of our users are using an
older version.  But even so, we are getting some complaints from the field
that they can't open the PDF files.  After much discussion about setting the
compatibility back to Acrobrat 4, we decided instead to put a note on the
web page telling them to upgrade their copy of Reader if they are having
trouble opening the files.  We included the link to the Adobe download page
to encourage them to do it.  This is much better than conpromising the
quality of the manuals because a few people have not updated their systems.

The puzzling part of the problem was that I was able to open the files on a
system that has only Acrobat 5 installed.  I got a warning message saying
that some features might not be displayed correctly but the file did open.
The support guys at my company could not open the files at all.  If you have
any ideas on what the problem might be, I'd appreciate it.  Is there a
difference between how Acrobat looks at a PDF file (for reading) than Reader
does?

Thanks,

Diane  (cleaning system now)

=======================

-----Original Message-----
From: Dov Isaacs [mailto:isaacs at adobe.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 2:02 PM
To: Diane Gaskill; Framers (E-mail)
Subject: RE: Multiple versions of Acrobat on same system?


Although (very unfortunately), it is PHYSICALLY possible to
have multiple versions of Adobe Acrobat concurrently installed,
concurrent versions of Adobe Reader concurrently installed, or
some combination of versions of both Acrobat and Reader installed,
the truth is that the architecture of these programs and the
underlying operating system services used by same really only
fully supports installation of only one version of EITHER Adobe
Acrobat or Adobe Reader on one system at one time.

I am sure we will get the inevitable responses from members of
this list that boast about how they have multiple versions and/or
mixtures of Acrobat and Reader concurrently installed and somehow
get some or most of the functionality to work for them. On the
other hand, there are a tremendous number of problems reported to
Adobe that are suddenly cleared up when the user's systems are
scraped of all concurrent versions of Acrobat and Reader, replaced
by a single version of one or another. (Note that by "Acrobat" I
mean any and all pieces of it including the Distiller, the AdobePDF
PostScript printer driver instance, and the viewing program!)

But, some list members will complain, how do I know what the
recipients of my PDF file will see on their systems if I also
don't have a copy of Reader installed, or perhaps multiple versions
of Reader and Acrobat installed? The response to that is to have
test systems (or separate test partitions of your one system) that
have minimal software installations (especially fonts) and a copy
of the target version of Adobe Reader. That is the only way to
truly simulate the user experience. For that matter, old, slower
systems are even more appropriate!

	- Dov

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Diane Gaskill
> Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 12:43 PM
>
> I've read several discussions on this list about multiple versions of
FM
> runing on the same system (it works).  Can multiple versions of
Acrobat also
> run on the same system?  I recently installed Acrobat 7 on my system
(XP2)
> but did not uninstall Acrobat 5.  Acrobat 5 now displays an error
message
> and closes.
>
> From the messages below, it sounds like the answer is no for
Distiller, but
> what about Acrobat itself?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Diane
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dov Isaacs
>
> If you let FrameMaker's install perform the installation of
> the stand-alone Distiller, make absolutely sure you UNINSTALL
> that version of Distiller and reboot before attempting to
> install any version of Acrobat!
>
> 	- Dov