We have a number of Windows 7 and Vista machines running Acrobat 9 Standard or Professional. When viewing the file properties of any PDF in Windows Explorer on any of these machines except one, there's a "PDF" tab that displays metadata information on the file. On one Win7 Ultimate PC running Acrobat 9.4 Professional, that tab doesn't display. The metadata can be seein in Acrobat File -> Properties, and can be searched in Windows Explorer, but cannot be accessed using that tab. As far as I know, there's no customization in either Acrobat or Windows that would cause this tab not to display - I've compared every setting I can think of between machines that show the PDF tab and the one that doesn't. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
I never did get this solved. The PC in question had a fairly serious hardware malfuction, and Dell sent us a pretty much identical replacement. We reinstalled all the same apps, and the new PC shows the PDF tab as expected, so I'm still mystified.
Before it was determined that the old PC was going back, we bought an app called PDF ShellTools from http://www.rttsoftware.com/shelltools.html. The user prefers that to opening the properties to view the metadata, so he's probably not even aware that he can see the PDF tab on his replacement PC.
I thought that the PDF tab simply isn't available with 64-bit Windows Explorer -- but it is available with the 32-bit version that came with my Vista 64. I invoke it to show my drive D: via a one-line batch file that reads
%windir%\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate, /root, d:
But when I tried this with the sysWOW64\explorer in Windows 7 just now I got no PDF tab.
David
I guess the first thing I'd do is check the 64-bit thing mentioned in another reply - no point troubleshooting if it's a known issue and can't be fixed.
The second thing I'd do - this is a little techie - go here http://nirsoft.net/ and get the tool called ShellExView. It just runs from the exe so there's no installation. It will give you a list of all the shell extensions installed on the system. Start by disabling all the 3rd party (non-Microsoft) ones and see if the PDF tab then displays. If yes, re-enable them one at a time until you find the offender, and uninstall it (or just leave it disabled). If disabling the 3rd party extensions doesn't solve the problem, just re-enable them and move on to another troubleshooting idea.
You could also look at the utility I mentioned previously, PDF ShellTools from http://www.rttsoftware.com/shelltools.html. My boss still often mentions how much he finds that more useful than the PDF tab.
We should be able to get the pdf tab according to http://forums.adobe.com/message/4123610#4123610
According to the following article, this is an Adobe problem related to their shell extension called pdfshell.dll. That extension is only a 32 bit extension, and 64 bit Windows will not run 32 bit extensions.
Check out the Ccmment from Tad Marshall here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/3397 1c82-78ee-445b-acb5-5a64db5b6bb0/
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