adobe reader and acorbat elements

Since your computer is almost new, you should contact Dell directly (not these forums) and ask them which version was supplied as part of your order, and if necessary why they didn't provide the current version. Do this as soon as possible.

Ken

That patch at adobe.com is only for fixing some issues with v7, so it won't work on on v6. And v6 apparently didn't need any patches.

You can complain to Dell about old software, but Dell's site clearly says v6, so you got what you ordered:

Adobe Acrobat Elements 6.0- Convert office documents to PDF files [add $39 or $1/month2]

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 02-02-2006 06:38 PM

I purchased a Dell Inspriron 600m in June with Adobe Acrobat Elements 6 installed on it.  In October Elements 6 mysteriously quit working with Word documents, but continued working with Excel documents.  I called Adobe at the time and they told me they do not sell Elements 6 commercially, only in bundles through resellers such as Dell, and do not support Elements 6. 

I called Dell and Dell told me they would not support Elements 6 unless I paid extra for the software support.  (Whatever. The software worked for less than five months.)  Dell suggested I uninstall and re-install the Elements 6 software.  Said I would be happy to, only problem was Dell forgot to send ALL software backup disks when my computer was shipped in June.  Took several calls and three months for Dell to get me the back up disks. 

So tonight I uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe Acrobat Elements 6 five or six times.  I cannot get Elements 6 to work, period.  I called Dell and spent well over an hour on the phone with a tech, and the tech failed to figure out how to make the software work.  What ever you do, DO NOT buy Elements 6 through Dell.  It is not worth your time or money.  You will be better served applying the $40 you would have spent on Elements 6 and applying it toward the newest version of Acrobat.  It's not even worth it to Dell.  With the four or five hours Dell tech support has spent on the phone with me, Dell has lost a lot of money on selling me Elements 6.

That said, if anyone can help me get the Elements 6 working, I would sure appreciate the wise counsel.

 

Highway Video- You did a lot of complaining but never said what's wrong with Elements 6.0 other than "not working", so it's impossible to help. If you post some details, including exact error messages you received, we might be able to figure it out. I've used Elements 6 from Dell on my Dimension 8400 with XPpro SP2 for over a year now, with only some minor annoyances.

Ron

Thank you for your willingness to help, if possible.

Before I uninstalled/reinstalled, Elements 6 icons fell out of Word, convert a Word doc into a PDF by clicking on the PDF icon on the menu bar.  "No worries," I thought, I'll just run a conversion through the Elements 6 program itself.  No go.  After the appropriate Word doc was selected in Elements 6, and the button "Convert to PDF" was clicked, a similar visual effect would occur on the screen as would occur when a Word doc was going through the process of being converted.  Only, when the process was done, the Word doc would pop up on the screen unconverted.  (Usually, when a Word doc was being converted, a PDF of the doc would pop up on the screen. To access the Word doc that was converted, one would have to go back and click on it in the folder in which it was stored.)  Interestingly enough, though the PDF icons fell out of Word, they had not fallen out of Excel, and I was still able to make PDF of Excel documents, both from the Excel workbook icons and from the Elements 6 program.  Unfortunately, I have far more use for converting Word docs to PDFs than I have for converting Excel docs.

After running the uninstall/reinstall process, the PDF icons were still not restored to the Word menu bar and they no longer showed up in Excel.  Then, when trying to use the Elements 6 program to make the conversions, I consistently got an error dialog box saying that something about PDFs were unavailable.  I called Dell, and the tech support person had me change some settings so that no file would be hidden.  He also had me uninstall/reinstall several times trying both the Typical setting and the Complete setting, and each time the same error came up.  He also had me uninstall/reinstall Acrobat Reader 6.1, which is found on the Dell backup disk.  Nothing helped.  He was mystified and said he couldn't help me.

So after hanging up with him I uninstalled/reinstall Elements 6 again using the custom setting, figuring I had nothing to lose.  I installed everything that could be installed using the custome setting.  At this point I am not getting the error message, but neither Word docs or Excel docs will convert to PDFs.  From the Elements 6 program I can locate docs I would like to convert, but when I hit the "Convert to PDF" button, it goes through the convert cycle on the screen but only delivers the document in its native Word or Excel format, not as a PDF.

Any suggestions for solving this dilemma?  Will be much appreciated.

Lets try some simple things first. Since you didn't mention your version of Word, I will assume Word 2003 but this should be similar with other versions.

Exit Word and do a file search for the template "normal.dot" (without the quotes). Make sure you include hidden and system files in the search. Delete all copies of normal.dot you find.

Start Word and it will recreate normal.dot. See if Element's pdf buttons are on the toolbar now and if they work. If buttons don't reappear, select Tools>Templates and Add-ins on Word toolbar and see if pdfmaker.dot is listed. If listed, put a check in box next to it, exit and restart Word.

If the buttons still don't appear, select Tools>Customize on Word toolbar and click Toolbar tab. Make sure PDFMaker 6.0 is checked. If that doesn't do it, or pdfmaker.dot wasn't listed as an Add-in, exit Word and uninstall/install Elements one more time.

If that works, you will probably have to open Excel and make sure PDFMaker 6.0
toolbar is checked on the Toobar tab too.

And you need to have Acrobat 6 installed too.

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 02-11-2006 08:31 PM

Ron,

I was having problems with turning Word docs (and only Word - everything else was working) into PDF's using Elements.  I read your message and it worked.  Thank you!  Even though it was not originally posted for me, it really helped me.

Nicole

Nicole,
You're welcome. Acrobat Elements 6.0 and Word don't always play nicely together for some reason. Took me a while to figure out how to make them behave. Glad it worked for you too.

Ron

I am finally trying to use Adobe Elements 6 that came with my XPS pc purchased in 11/2005. When trying to convert a Word file I get a pop-up saying 'Unable to find Adobe PDF resource files' and offering a chance to run some type of 'repair' program. If I select Yes, the program runs and eventually calls for my Adobe Elements CD, which I insert. After a minute or so the 'repair' seems to stop, so I again try the conversion of the Word doc to PDF. No luck; still won't convert.

I've unintstalled Adobe Elements and reinstalled; then when I try to convert the Word doc, I get the same message. Run the 'repair' again; no luck. I looked at these postings and noticed advice to delete the normal.dot file; which I did. It worked! I created the PDF file. But the next day, I'm back to it not converting. Oh, while going thru all this process, I now have problems with my HP printer. But I'll install/reinstall if needed.

I suppose everyone else with this problem learned to make note of the Adobe Elements serial # that is on the CD before inserting the CD into the pc for install. What a fool I was for thinking the number on the back of the sleeve was the serial #. Duh.

Okay, guys. There must be some conflict with this Dell version of Adobe Elements? I'd appreciate any assistance to help me use this $40(?) program purchased fr Dell.

Which version of Acrobat Reader is on your system? 6.x or something else? Are you sure that pdfmaker.dot gets listed as an add-in in Word on Tools>templates & add-ins? And that pdf.dot is checked on the add-in list?

Try this: Uninstall Elements (yeah, I know...), then delete normal.dot and restart Word. On Word toolbar click Help>Detect&Repair. When that's done, exit Word and reboot. Turn off your antiviral software and everything else running in the background. Now install Elements. Reboot when it's done and open Word. Now...?

I looked on my system and I don't see anything called "PDF resource files". I have 2 folders related to Elements:

c:\documents and settings\all users\documents\Adobe PDF 6.0
This folder contains 4 subfolders, each with 2-4 files in them:
\data
\settings
\examples
\startup

c:\program files\adobe\acrobat 6.0\pdfmaker
This folder contains 3 subfolders, each with a couple of files, plus 2 files
\mail
\common
\office (this folder has a pdfmaker.dot Word template)
pdfmaker.dot (a Word template, different size than the one in \office)
pdfmaker.xla (this is an Excel template)

Does Elements work properly from Excel or Outlook? In order words, is this problem specific to Word?

Ron

Thanks for the link. That's the thread that I previously read and tried. It did fix the problem, but only temporarily. I'm hoping I don't have to uninstall then reinstall Adobe Elements every time I reboot. Surely there's a longer-term fix??

Thanks for your reply.

I am using Reader 7.0, and have not tried using Elements with any program other than Word. I'll try you suggestions but I'm not in a position now to reboot, so I'll post again, probably tomorrow, on the results.

Did you try the things I suggested in earlier posts in this thread?

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 04-02-2006 04:09 PM