Adobe Acrobat Clean Reinstall

A normal uninstall/reinstall leaves junk behind, so do it properly. It’s also worth doing when someone has “fixed” Acrobat by just turning off its Outlook add-in: that hides the problem, and the add-in tends to come back.

Allow about 30 minutes.

Steps

1. Uninstall Acrobat normally via appwiz.cpl
2. Download and run the Acrobat Cleaner Tool (AcroCleaner) from Adobe to strip out what the uninstaller missed
3. Delete the leftover folders if they’re still there:
   • C:\Program Files\Adobe
   • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe
4. Reboot
5. Download and install Acrobat using the standalone installer
   • NEVER use Creative Cloud to install it
6. Sign the user’s Adobe account back in, or get them to do it

If it was an Outlook problem

If the original complaint was Outlook freezing or crawling, check the other Outlook add-ins before blaming Adobe. Practice-management add-ins (LEAP in particular) syncing huge contact sets can freeze Outlook on send and look exactly like an Adobe problem. A clean Acrobat reinstall won’t hurt, but it might not be the fix.

If the Acrobat add-in gets disabled rather than removed, remove it properly by running Outlook as admin, then File → Options → Add-ins → COM Add-ins.

also… Adobe Kill Command, LEAP Adobe Add-in Script, LEAP Full Uninstall