Acrobat X Std - Crop margin options grayed out

[woodp]

My scanner creates 8.5x14" scans which in Acrobat 9 I just cropped to 8.5x11" by selecting "Constrain Proportions" and setting "Bottom:" to 3".

When I try the same thing with Acrobat X, the entire Crop page is grayed out. I've looked and can't find a configuration problem. What am I missing?

[AbhigyanModi]

Does it happen on all documents, or just the documents from that scanner. If later, can you post a sample document for us to see.

[woodp]

No, it happens with all my documents - I went back and found documents I created with acrobat 8 and 9, both scanned and Office-generated acrobat files. In each case, the "Set Page Boxes" opens with almost every option grayed out.

[Bill12]

Did the file some how get converted to a PDF/A. If so, you need to get out of that mode to edit the document in any way. I suspect that OCR is also greyed out.

[woodp]

If the file was somehow converted to PDF/A, I'm not certain how. Here's my scanner's "Configure Presets" page:

And going through the preferences settings didn't yield much to go on either - The only PDF/A setting I found was on this page and it seems appropriate. I did try toggling it, but it made no difference.

Any help is appreciated!

[Bobby_Johnson_]

I see that the option to set the height and width in "Configure Preset" window is also greyed out. Click on the Options button next to your scanner name. This will give an option to show the Scanner Interface. Change the document size from 8.5x14 to 8.5x11in the scanner interface. Then scan the document.

[woodp]

Bump. This one is still frustrating me.

[MichaelKazlow]

Do you have Acrobat X and 9 installed on the same machine?

[woodp]

Do you have Acrobat X and 9 installed on the same machine?

No, as a matter of fact, Acrobat X was installed on a fresh Win7 installation.

[Bill12]

Maybe try to select the crop tool and mark and area to crop. Then click on that area and maybe the screen will come up for modifications. Why you can not set the defaults to use is a different issue, but see if this will at least allow you to crop. Try to think out of the box about different ways to use the tool. I do not have AA X and so do not know the specifics there. However, I typically mark areas first and then click and have never had such a problem in previous versions of AA. To see if the PDF is a PDF/A, you should be able to check the properties with the audit tool in the PDF Optimize screen, unless that have moved that some place else in AA X. Sounds like the moved a lot of the menu items -- to confuse folks? In fact, the Reduce File Size option used to be on the File menu, was moved to the Document Menu, and now it seems it is back to File>Save As! Shame you have to relearn with each new release.

[Nick_Sage]

I'm having the same problem. This was not an issue on the Acrobat X Pro version that I trialed, but it is on the Standard version. Does anyone know if Adobe has limited this feature to the Pro? (If so, it's another outrageous example of functionality removed between Acrobat 9 and X Standard).

[Nick_Sage]

Just saw this discussion of the same problem on another forum, which indicates this is an unintentional bug in Acrobat X Standard:

http://printplanet.com/forums/adobe/24515-crop-tool-problem-acrobat-x-standard

[woodp]

So the good news is that it's a known issue and will be fixed? The bad news is that it's been 60 days and *no* patch has been delivered ...

The comment from Leonardr at printplanet.com is confusing. He claims there are two crop tools, "Crop Pages" and "Set Page Boxes," but at least on my installation, I see a "Crop Pages" link which takes me to "Set Page Boxes"... and it's exactly the "Set Page Boxes" that has the grayed out. I have a feeling he is trying to be helpful but doesn't have a copy of X STD himself ...

[Dave Merchant]

"Crop" is the tool button on the Tools Pane / Pages Panel, which is interactive - you must draw a region on the page and double-click it to open the dialog, at which point it is pre-populated with the bounds of the rectangle you just drew.

"Set Page Boxes" is on the Tools Pane / Print Production Panel, and opens the dialog directly with blank fields. Print Production in Acrobat Pro is a hidden panel by default, you must show it using the dropdown menu on the Tools Pane header bar.

Although the dialog you're seeing is nominally the same for both, the route to get there within the code is different, hence the possibility of a bug in one but not the other.

In terms of product patches, Adobe does not usually give future-facing statements about what features will be included in which forthcoming update, except for those triggered by PSIRT. There is a defined cycle for update releases, and out-of-band patches are only pushed for critical issues. A single non-exploitable bug won't usually warrant an update in its own right, but each cycle aims to roll in as many fixes as possible. There has to be a compromise between responsivity and the inevitable complaints when software updates itself too frequently, especially for products like Acrobat where users have significant enterprise customization.

[woodp]

Dave Merchant wrote:

"Set Page Boxes" is on the Tools Pane / Print Production Panel, and opens the dialog directly with blank fields. Print Production in Acrobat Pro is a hidden panel by default, you must show it using the dropdown menu on the Tools Pane header bar.

I can get to "Set Page Boxes" from the Tools | Pages | Crop menu, but then all the size options are grayed out. I can't find "Print Production."

Looking at my installation, under Tools are "Pages", "Content", "Forms", "Recognize Text", "Protection" and "Sign & Certify." Hidden by default are an additional "Document Processing", "JavaScript", "Accessibility" and "Analyze", and nothing sticks out as an alternative way to get to "Set Page Boxes."

How do I get to the "Print Production" panel?

[thester13184]

Has there been anything further on this. I am having the same problem.

[woodp]

Not that I'm aware of. I'm at 10.0.2 and the cropping tools still doesn't work as well as it did in 9.x ...

[Jim Kelowna]

I have struggled with same issue on a clean Win 7 machine where Acro X Std was only Acrobat installed. Now have 10.0.3 and still cannot crop except individual pages by the crop tool - select and then double click to get the dialog box with the selections grayed out.

Adobe documentation says to find the dialog box by choosing Document => Crop Pages. My Menus have File, Edit, View, Window and Help. None of these has a submenu of Document. So, it appears to me that the documentation is also in error.

[woodp]

Thanks, Nick. At least I'm no longer the only one!

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling X, and I even tried a clean installation off a fresh Win7 install. Nothing works and I'm pretty annoyed I paid for an UPGRADE that as it now turns out has fewer features.

Thanks for that, Adobe!

[Steve_Malecki]

Acrobat 10 works a bit differently.  First you have to add the CROP icon to your toolbar.  Click on the Gear looking icon "Custom Quick Tools".  Select TOOLS - PAGES - CROP.  Add it to the left by either double clicking on it or selecting the left arrow.   Now open the pdf document you want to crop.  Click on the CROP icon on the toolbar.  Click on the image at the upper left part you want to crop. Drag the blue screen over the image you want to keep. When you let go of the mouse, you can make any minor adjustments.  Then double click on the image. (You can not make changes here-as in previous Acrobat versions)  Click OK.  Save the image that is now cropped.   (I then save the image as a png).

[woodp]

Nope, that doesn't make a difference. There's no argument that the cropping tool works - You can select it and drag the blue box over the target document and crop your selection.

What we're asking about is why the Margin Controls in the subsequent Set Page Boxes window are grayed out. Specifically I want to trim my scanned page to 8.5x11 inches. In Acrobat 9, you could use the Margin Control boxes - In Acrobat X they're grayed out.

[RFTorqued]

Hello, woodp et al.      

     I am having the same problem with the same program.  It happens whenever I try to crop, regardless of--

          (a)     Whether I am cropping a newly created PDF, a PDF created some time ago with Acrobat X Std, or a PDF created with Acrobat 5.0 (as shown in the screen shot); and

          (b)     Whether I get to "Set Page Boxes" by double-clicking on the image directly after clicking the crop tool button (as shown in the screen shot) or by first doing the click-and-drag dance to crop the image to approximately the size I want. 

    

This is a big productivity issue: 

• I scan and save a lot of documents, very few of which are larger than 8.5 x 11 inches.
• I am yet to find a way to configure the paper-size preset, which toggles between "Automatic" (i.e., 8.5 x 14 inches) and Nothing (both with the Width and Height greyed out).
• To crop the bottom of a single page by 2.88 inches to get it to 11 inches with click-and-drag cropping (to include displaying the ruler, which must be done each and every time I start Acrobat) takes dozens of seconds, while using the crop margin feature (judging from my experience in Acrobat 5.0, where the key sequence is Shift/Ctrl/t ==> Alt/b ==> 2.88 ==> [Enter] ==> [Enter]) would take just seconds.  

     As I understand the history, since you first reported this problem 14 posts and nearly ten months ago, other users have reported the same problem, and Adobe has issued several updates--yet the bug remains.  Does no one from Adobe monitor this forum?

     Adobe premeditates its products' obsolescence by making backward compatibility an unattainable daydream, thus conscripting buyers of its newer products to proliferate no-longer-fully portable documents produced with the newer versions, which by their growing predominance force its original customers to continually buy ever-more expensive, memory-intensive, and clunky products (Do any other dinosaurs survive out there who might remember, for instance, how quickly one could insert form fields on the fly in 5.0?).  The least Adobe could do is make even a head fake toward caring whether its marketing strategy also robs customers of productivity--because time really is the one asset one can never recoup.  Because it apparently will not, I remain

RFTorqued. 

[woodp]

RFTorqued,

Your description sounds exactly like mine, except that ... about a month ago the scan cropping ability suddenly started working! I only use the functionality every 2-3 weeks so I don't know exactly when it happened or what caused it. I can only guess - There were Windows 7 updates, I know I reinstalled the Acrobat software *and* the printer driver because of a driver conflict with Quickbooks' PDF driver. Did I fix it or did an Adobe update fix it? I have no idea. Sorry.

I wish I had a better answer for you. Do you have Quickbooks installed?

[Hitender_Prakash · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

Please update your Acrobat X Std. to 10.1.0 either by clicking Help > Check for Updates (from within the application) or download and install the patch from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=5135&fileID=4771

The issue is resolved in Acrobat 10.1.0

Hopefully this should resolve the issue.

[woodp]

HT,

Do you *know* that 10.1.0 fixed the problem or are you just making an assumption? I haven't been able to find a list of fixes included in 10.1.0 - Do you know where it can be found?