Adobe Reader Command Line Reference

Asked 6/3, 2009 at 15:5 Answered 30/4, 2023 at 17:24

106

Is there any official command line (switches) reference for the different versions of
Adobe (formerly Acrobat) Reader?

I didn't find anything on Adobe Developer Connection.

Especially I want to:

Start Reader and open a file
Open a file at a specific position (page)
Close Reader (or single file)

Romaineromains answered 6/3, 2009 at 15:5 Comment(1)

You can also save inside the PDF document itself, at which page a viewer should open it. With this the PDF document always open at that page, independent which PDF viewer you use. – Ergotism 20/9, 2018 at 10:15

140

You can find something about this in the Adobe Developer FAQ. (It's a PDF document rather than a web page, which I guess is unsurprising in this particular case.)

The FAQ notes that the use of the command line switches is unsupported.

To open a file it's:

AcroRd32.exe <filename>

The following switches are available:

/n - Launch a new instance of Reader even if one is already open
/s - Don't show the splash screen
/o - Don't show the open file dialog
/h - Open as a minimized window
/p <filename> - Open and go straight to the print dialog
/t <filename> <printername> <drivername> <portname> - Print the file the specified printer.

Marginate answered 6/3, 2009 at 15:19 Comment(13)

The path seems to have changed. A google search turned up the following two versions adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/… and partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/sdk/pdf/… – Juggernaut 18/12, 2010 at 12:10

After printing from command line, adobe will leave aleast one window open which can hang your script. open a non related pdf or adobe window. This will keep your script running – Vehement 7/8, 2012 at 12:43

There are a ton of other executables in that directory. Do any of those have the ability to import XML data into an FDF file? – Robertoroberts 20/3, 2013 at 20:35

For the /t switch, <drivername> and <portname> are not mandatory. If they're omitted, the printer will just use the default. – Wiese 12/9, 2014 at 13:17

having the directory in %path% and aliasing default options with doskey acrord32=acrord32 /n /s /o /a navpanes=0&zoom=100&page=1 is the only way to keep using reader for me – Epithelioma 25/11, 2014 at 4:41

From cygwin, you can use acrord32 & for i in *.pdf; do acrord32 $i; done to open all the PDFs in the current directory. I also alias acrord32, but just as an alternative to adding it to the path. – Udell 12/1, 2016 at 15:28

Hi, do you know how to change the /t command to print to file instead of printer? cannot find correct syntax in any of the adobe documentation. @JosiahYoder – Trudeau 2/12, 2018 at 13:38

@Trudeau Sorry, I don't know. – Udell 13/12, 2018 at 21:4

Looks like Latest version of Acrobat does not support parameters anymore. – Fillmore 29/5, 2020 at 10:55

@AntonProkofiev Why do you think that and which version of Reader are you referring to? The above commands still work for my Reader DC 2020.0009.20067. – Melodrama 7/7, 2020 at 10:30

@ThorstenSchöning Sorry my fault!. I missed space between last parameter and file name. In my script: was AcroRd32.exe /t /n /h /o /sFileName (no space betrween /s and FileName) this is working in AdobeReader X (version 10.1.16) , but not in Adobe Reader DC (version 2020.04.20074). – Fillmore 8/7, 2020 at 13:20

The actual document with the list of parms, c2015, is named this "AcrobatDC_pdf_open_parameters.pdf" - as of May 2021 - and it gets moved around when Adobe rearranges their sites. – Stacte 13/5, 2021 at 15:39

I know this is comment abuse, but @charlesross thank you! – Jon 29/11, 2021 at 9:54

I found this:

http://www.robvanderwoude.com/commandlineswitches.php#Acrobat

Open a PDF file with navigation pane active, zoom out to 50%, and search for and highlight the word "batch":

AcroRd32.exe /A "zoom=50&navpanes=1=OpenActions&search=batch" PdfFile

Inconformity answered 13/8, 2009 at 18:35 Comment(0)

To open a PDF at page 100 the follow works

<path to Adobe Reader> /A "page=100" "<Path To PDF file>"

If you require more than one argument separate them with &

I use the following in a batch file to open the book I'm reading to the page I was up to.

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe /A "page=149&pagemode=none" "D:\books\MCTS(70-562) ASP.Net 3.5 Development.pdf"

The best list of command line args for Adobe Reader I have found is here.
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/PDFOpenParameters.pdf

It's for version 7 but all the arguments I tried worked.

As for closing the file, I think you will need to use the SDK, or if you are opening the file from code you could close the file from code once you have finished with it.

Chuffy answered 27/3, 2011 at 18:14 Comment(1)

this link not work any more – Heteropolar 19/10, 2022 at 10:44

Call this after the print job has returned:

oShell.AppActivate "Adobe Reader"
oShell.SendKeys "%FX"

Uralian answered 24/9, 2013 at 9:1 Comment(1)

What package/system is this from? – Place 7/10, 2016 at 14:36

The most accessible source of the /A and URL.pdf# command line switches is the 2007 version 8 copy currently available from

https://pdfobject.com/pdf/pdf_open_parameters_acro8.pdf or https://web.archive.org/web/20210413084849/https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/pdf_open_parameters.pdf

It was rebadged as Edition 1.0 for DC in 2015, But content appears unchanged, however you can get a copy at present from https://corpora.tika.apache.org/base/docs/bug_trackers/pdf.js/pdf.js-LINK-2843-0.pdf

The was no "close reader" command but its possible to use a wrapper function to kill task, however its better to invoke clean close F4 via send keys, as per other answers. Here is latest source of Command Line Switches

How do I use the Windows command line?

This Link below, as described above using #page=52, works in FireFox HOWEVER ironically in Acrobat enabled Edge this does NOT ALWAYS function for me !!

https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/acrobatsdk/pdfs/acrobatsdk_overview.pdf#page=52

Combatant answered 30/4, 2023 at 17:24 Comment(0)

Having /A without additional parameters other than the filename didn't work for me, but the following code worked fine with /n

string sfile = @".\help\delta-pqca-400-100-300-fc4-user-manual.pdf";
Process myProcess = new Process();
myProcess.StartInfo.FileName = "AcroRd32.exe"; 
myProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = " /n " + "\"" + sfile + "\"";
myProcess.Start();

Lavine answered 7/10, 2020 at 3:54 Comment(0)

ExternalViewers for sumatrapdfreader

[ CommandLine = "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /A "page=%p" "%1" Name = Acrobat DC Filter = *.pdf ]

Borage answered 30/4, 2023 at 0:58 Comment(0)

How do I use the Windows command line?

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