What Happened to "History" in File Open in Acrobat 10?

I haven't received my Mac copy of Acrobat 10 yet, but you would be surprised about the number of people that complain about the recent files capability of programs. Some like them, some don't.

As we have confirmed several times on these forums, Organizer has been removed from Acrobat X. The File>History tree was maintained by the Organizer plugin, so this is also removed.

Usage data indicted that _very_ few people used the Organizer feature, and the amount of work required to ensure it functioned robustly in modern operating environments with distributed storage, SAAS, etc, was not considered practicable - even in Acrobat 9 it was easy to break. If you want more detail on the decisions behind version changes you'll have to ask the product team themselves.

File>History was generated by the Organizer plugin, so this was removed as a consequence.

Thanks a million for the information Dave.

Much appreciated.

sf d;-)=

In an age where digital and online privacy is of paramount importance it seems total craziness that Adobe has decided to remove the ability to clear history.

Every other organisation seems to be enabling users to control their information whereas Adobe seems to think that it knows best for all.

We all have unique circumstances which require us to use products in different ways. Adobe has made a serious error in making history deletion so difficult.

What about people viewing PDF files in areas controlled by oppressive regimes? What about someone opening their resume on a work computer? What about… all sorts of different scenarios!

Adobe, bring this feature back.

For so many of my own needs, and my clients needs, we loved the Organizer.

It was truly a life saver for us.

With so many PDF files constantly being printed and emailed and then printed again a day later etc, or a week later....this was truly one of the best features I thought Acrobat offered.

I'm usually OK with these sorts of things happening in upgrades and can normally just go with it, but this was truly hurts.

Bring it back!!! Please!!!

If you have one of the Creative Suites, you might find that you can use Adobe Bridge to replicate some of the lost functionality.

hello...thanks...but, it really isn't the same...The organizer dynamically organized any PDF file opened today, yesterday, last week etc, and you could quickly e-mail or print from here. It was awesome...The Bridge is the best we may have, but it really lacks the simplicity but powerful workflow the Organizer gave to us.

But thanks!!!!

If you happen to be on Mac, DefaultFolder or similar utilities might provide a little bit the History function did.

Too bad, once I found out how that feature worked, I started using it immediately to file my fillable PDF so that I can later open a specific PDF and copy and paste a Form Field in a new PDF. It was simple and so useful.

Likewise, many of us in my organization used the Organizer's "History" function.  It is a disappointment and an inconvenience that you have decided to remove it.  As a customer, I don't remember receiving a survey or query about whether I found this function useful.  So much for customer satisfaction...!

Hi

Same here, I spent quite a while searching around in the user interface for it. Found a few other useful things that had randomly been located somewhere new.

Web search brought me here.

Why is it that new software always goes on about the "great new features" and then doesnt mention the "great old features" it has either deleted or hidden so thouroughly you cant find them.

I considered this feature extremely useful and am disappointed it isnt there any more. It is even more irritating to read posts telling me I can search for files using the OS--I certainly knew that already and it really is not a "workaround".

Why not enable some sort of plug in system where things like this can be available for those that want it?

As a further comment I dont really see why so many other frequently used features had to be put in the irritating side panel.

Makes me feel good about the MS ribbon... I recall changing to Word 2007 when it first came out, it was definitely easier to find things that in this new Acrobat. So maybe your developers should learn something from that.

Hi Dave:  I thought the History function was simple but brilliant.  It was awesome having the extensive history.  It was such an obvious improvement over the typical 5 or 10 recent files, I actually thought all the other software companies should/would eventually copy Adobe's history feature, especially Microsoft Office.  Please bring it back! 

I think it's safe to say my post represents the opinion of about 1,000,000 other users who didn't take the time to speak up :-), so again, please bring it back!  Thanks.

I can't discuss what might be happening with future versions, but to put it bluntly if someone wants History in Acrobat X they'll need to write their own plugin - the SDK makes that possible for someone with skills in C++ but the Organizer plugin which History used as a back-end was a beast. It wouldn't be a bedroom coder project.

As to 'the opinion of about 1,000,000 other users' - as I said in my previous reply the product team knows  how few people used Organizer; if it was genuinely popular it'd still be there. Sorry, but it's a commercial world and to invest time in new features, the old and unpopular ones have to be dropped. If you used History then I know that's not good news, but the same can be said for geospatial registration, desktop reflow mode or ADBC.

It's quite telling that no other vendor has copied Acrobat's History idea in their own software - they appreciated how much of a Pandora's Box it was to support.

Thanks Dave.  I appreciate the quick response.  Mike

I thought it was just me overlooking it or Adobe came up with a new name for the organizer. GONE!?!? This is a major punch in the gut. I relied on it. You just added on about 1/2 hour to my work day to look for old PDFs . . . thanks a lot. The Organizer was a major help for ppl who delt with PDFs daily. You may say that it was not popular or whatever, but the people who used it NEEDED that function!  

As Dave M. said,"As we have confirmed several times on these forums, Organizer has been removed ....". If you had to re-iterate it several times doesn't that tell you that many people used it?

BRING IT BACK!!!

Looks like I'll just work off 9 again...it meant that much.

Have A Nice Day!

Offhand I think we've had about 30 people asking about it. Tens of millions of people use the Acrobat X Family.

I am somewhat disappointed myself because the browser also kept a record of online PDFs that I accessed. I would welcome a function like this to where I can also remove pdfs from the list that I no longer need.

But I do have somewhat of a handy tip for Windows 7 users. It is the "Jump List."  Simply place the Acrobat X icon into the Windows taskbar. By right-clicking on the Acrobat icon,you will see the 10 most recent documents you have opened.  Not enough?

Right click on a blank area in the Windows taskbar. Choose Properties,and in the dialog box click on the Start Menu tab,then on the "Customize" button.

At the bottom of the "Customize Start Menu" dialog is "Number of Recent Items to display in Jump Lists"  The default is 10. You can set it up to 60.

Usually 30 works for me. All taskbar items will remember the last 30 items accessed,and you can remove or pin items to that list.

Gener7 - That is the single most useful computing tip I've received all year.  Thanks so much!  This looks like it may be even better than Organizer, because that took forever to load.  I signed up for an account on this forum just so I could thank you.  Huge help! 

Thanks for letting me know,Mike! I always wonder if what I typed helped someone or just went into the Cloud Bitbucket.

And oh yes,welcome to the forums. I hope there will much more good advice to come your way.

Gene

Not having organizer in Acrobat XI is very disapointing.  I delayed upgrading to Acrobat X because of it, and now I subscribed to Creative Cloud, and this is disapointing to not see organizer integrated into the cloud services.  Guess I'll have to change my workflow.

Organizer won't be returning, and there was no suggestion that Acrobat XI was to have included it.

At the very least, make the number of Edit->Preferences->General->Documents "Documents in recently used list" larger than 10. I suggest at least 20, list should cascade or otherwise accessible to the last item in the list on a smaller screen. Even better, Acrobat could remember the docs you had open when you shut down your system and bring them back up when the system reboots.

I know this post is old, but FYI if you miss Organizer you can use Apple's Preview instead. Go to preferences and choose "Open groups of files in one window" and then open multiple pdfs and they'll all show up in the sidebar of the document. It won't save this way, but at least all the docs are together while you're working.

Wouldn't it be a good idea  when a feature, like the organizer, is terminated to put the source code to the comunity especially when it is already organized as a plugin.

This would be a good step of adobe to give the users who what to organize themself to maintain the further developement.

The organizer was a really helpful feature. To remove it only while most useres have not known about this somehow hidden feature until they have shown it by a supervisor / friend might be not the best solution.

For me it was one reason to stay at version 9 still... I miss the organizer in newer versions!

Thanks Dave

I appreciate your firm response, but do not agree with your reasoning - and apparently a lot of long-time users of Acrobat (myself since 5. or 6., don't even remember anymore). As many of the SW vendoirs, Adobe should from time to time use User's Pool and give the results to the product managers. Sometimes those guys even do not use the product they are setting a road maps ahead!

I also cannot believe it has been removed. I used the organizer to select and then email multiple PDFs that are retrieved by, and stored in, a reference management program. Now I think my workflow has to be to select to email them one at a time, or save each of such provisional emails as drafts, and then drag them into a single response. This is certainly a step backwards unless there is a feature to select and send, or at least send all currently opened PDFs, in a single email???

That's really umbelievable such useful feature has been removed

A journal keeping record of the work done on the pdf documents open is a must!

Behind the "History" feature there is all the work done on reading and collecting documents which otherwise must be made manually since certainly the last open documents in Windows doesn't help restoring.

I don't think I will continue on using next versions of Acrobat, the XI, as it seams it does not have this feature either.

Can I mount on my computer also an older version of Acrobat, I have the 9th, just for reading and annotations?

Dave, at least the chance for a plugin?!

That's really umbelievable such useful feature has been removed

A journal keeping record of the work done on the pdf documents open is a must!

Behind the "History" feature there is all the work done on reading and collecting documents which otherwise must be made manually since certainly the last open documents in Windows doesn't help restoring.

I don't think I will continue on using next versions of Acrobat, the XI, as it seams it does not have this feature either.

Can I mount on my computer also an older version of Acrobat, I have the 9th, just for reading and annotations?

Dave, at least the chance for a plugin?!

It's borderline bizzare. How difficult can it be? Doesn't every web browser have this feature?

Here's an item I posted earlier. Pin your Acrobat icon to the task bar and use its' Jump list.

Not the same as having the Organizer but it should work.

I do have somewhat of a handy tip for Windows 7 users. It is the "Jump List."  Simply place the Acrobat X icon into the Windows taskbar. By right-clicking on the Acrobat icon,you will see the 10 most recent documents you have opened.  Not enough?

Right click on a blank area in the Windows taskbar. Choose Properties,and in the dialog box click on the Start Menu tab,then on the "Customize" button.

At the bottom of the "Customize Start Menu" dialog is "Number of Recent Items to display in Jump Lists"  The default is 10. You can set it up to 60.

Usually 30 works for me. All taskbar items will remember the last 30 items accessed,and you can remove or pin items to that list.

If you read more carefully what the post is about you will se the question is VERY different

Here there is a debate with Adobe about a very useful feature that has been withdrawn in recent versions.

If you had been a older user of Adobe you will understand that this is very discouraging

Please don't give Adobe an alibi otherwise not requested

thanks

That's a nice work around. Thanks for this.

I was not aware I was giving Adobe an alibi. If you read for understanding I was giving out a way to at least see recent files.  This is just a repeat of my earlier post in this thread that has helped others. Don't like it, don't use it.

My first purchase was Acrobat 7 Standard and yes I am well aware of the Organizer.

Debate is a meaningless word here. Adobe is a private company, Acrobat is their property.

You're welcome

Glad it worked for you.

I have not searched but I wonder if there is some company out there offering pdf organizer software?

Gene

It was an absolutely inane decision by Adobe!

I am a university researcher and have tons of pdf journal articles in my computer. The Organizer feature was great for organizing different pdfs according to topics and areas. With this feature gone, I have to manually go to the different levels of the file directory to retrieve the files.

Please bring it back!! I can't think of anything more stupid than what you have done!

SKIM has this feature. However, it is for Mac only - and it's free!

Bridge would do the job far better. If you have an Adobe product like Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesgn, it should be there free of charge.

Bridge has Smart Folders similar to the Organizer's Smart Collections, so you can collect your papers by certain criteria, yet it will stay in what ever directory level it is.

You can select and preview the paper with the spacebar before opening it in Acrobat.

Perhaps you can give that a try.

If you only have Acrobat, you may not be able to get Bridge, but the ideaa is the same. Use some form of Digital Asset Manager that will organize your files as the Organizer has done.