7 Replies Latest reply: Sep 27, 2014 12:32 PM by meeedson RSS

    Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro

    meeedson Community Member

      Scrolling through *any* pdf document on my Macbook Air using Acrobat XI is so slow as to make Acrobat essentially useless.  Even flipping pages is slow.  (I.e., "page down" to move a page at a time.)  I had a slow scrolling problem with Acrobat X, but it's much much worse in XI.  No problem scrolling the same document in Preview or any other program that displays pdf files (e.g. DevonThink).  This is a MB Air with 8 gb RAM and a solid state hard drive so storage isn't an issue.  I only note that it's a MB Air because an Air doesn't have a Retina display, so it's not a Retina rendering issue.  I've seen a bunch of other threads in the Adobe Communities forums about similar scrolling problmes, and threads elsewhere when I Google to problem, but I have yet to see any workable solution.  That said, if *everyone* had this problem, I'd expect to see more about it, so I'm assuming there in fact is some setting that I can change that will help.

       

      I've tried a lot of the suggested solutions (like opening the document in Preview and saving it from there) to no avail.  It also doesn't matter if it's a small pdf or big one.  Or if it's OCR'd as a searchable image or as ClearScan.  Or if there are lots of images or if it's all text.

       

      Anyone have any ideas?

        • 1. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
          ruchika Adobe Employee

          Hi meeedson,

           

          Has any of the recent updates introduced this issue or are you facing this since the time you have installed the application?

          • 2. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
            meeedson Community Member

            The slow scrolling has been going on since Acrobat X, maybe even since IX, so it's been a long time.  But it's been getting progressivly (much) worse both with the Xi upgrade and with each successive update since then, esp. the last two or three updates.  But I can't put my finger on one specific update that suddenly caused the issue.  FWIW, I tried doing an full unintall/reinstall of Acrobat XI just a couple of weeks ago in the hope that would resolve the issue, but it didn't.  (And I mean complete.  Although Adobe doesn't provide good instructions for a complete uninstall, I moved the app to the trash, and then searched for and deleted every file/folder with "acrobat" or "adobe" in its name, including all I could find in my hidden library folders.)

            • 3. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
              Luc Leroy @ Adobe Adobe Employee

              Hello meeedson,

              We've made significant progress in this field since we've started Acrobat 11, and Acrobat 11.0.9 is much faster than 11.0.3 so your report is surprising and I'd like to work with you in order to solve the issue.

               

              Can you confirm that you're currently running 11.0.9?

              Would you mind sharing a PDF file you typically complain about?

              Also what generation of MacBook Air are you using?

              Finally have you experienced fluctuations based on your network quality?

               

              Thank you in advance,

              Luc Leroy

              • 4. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
                meeedson Community Member

                Thanks for stepping in.  I am using 11.0.9.  And the problem occurs with every single .pdf now.  (With older versions of Acrobat, I didn’t see the problem in every .pdf.)  Here are a three examples that come from totally different sources, and have different file sizes and page lengths.

                 

                Two other observations:  (1) Docs with comments or highlighting that I’ve added are noticeably slower that sanitized docs, but even sanitized docs are slow.  (2) They’re even slower if I’ve added the comments/highlighting and have not yet saved the doc (as though it’s a memory issue, except that it shouldn’t be given my system).  I.e., if I’ve highlighted several passages w/o saving, Acrobat will scroll even more slowly, and slightly speed up after I save.  Only one of these sample docs (the smallest) has highlighting, which I put in at random (so it’s not confidential), just to show the effect.  Note too that the lag seems unaffected by the number of other programs I have open at the same time as Acrobat. 

                 

                As to my system:  It’s a 2012 13" MB Air, with 500 GB solid state hard drive, 8 GB RAM, and a 2 GHz Intel Core i7 processor.  Using OS X 10.9.4.

                • 5. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
                  meeedson Community Member

                  Thanks for stepping in.  I am using 11.0.9.  And the problem occurs with every single .pdf now.  (With older versions of Acrobat, I didn’t see the problem in every .pdf.)  Here are a three examples that come from totally different sources, and have different file sizes and page lengths.

                   

                  Two other observations:  (1) Docs with comments or highlighting that I’ve added are noticeably slower that sanitized docs, but even sanitized docs are slow.  (2) They’re even slower if I’ve added the comments/highlighting and have not yet saved the doc (as though it’s a memory issue, except that it shouldn’t be given my system).  I.e., if I’ve highlighted several passages w/o saving, Acrobat will scroll even more slowly, and slightly speed up after I save.  Only one of these sample docs (the smallest) has highlighting, which I put in at random (so it’s not confidential), just to show the effect.  Note too that the lag seems unaffected by the number of other programs I have open at the same time as Acrobat. 

                   

                  As to my system:  It’s a 2012 13" MB Air, with 500 GB solid state hard drive, 8 GB RAM, and a 2 GHz Intel Core i7 processor.  Using OS X 10.9.4.

                  • 6. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
                    meeedson Community Member

                    PS: Forgot to answer your question re: network quality.  Haven’t noticed any difference.  Happens at home where I’ve got a very fast, solid cable connection.  And I haven’t noticed any difference when I’m using my computer in locations without any wifi at all.  In fact I just tested one of the sample docs I sent you with the wifi on my computer turned off.  No difference one way or the other.

                     

                    Why would a network connection affect scrolling in a locally stored document anyway?

                    • 7. Re: Extremely slow scrolling and paging on Macbook Air (OS X) using Acrobat XI Pro
                      meeedson Community Member

                      Since I haven't heard back from you, I assume you're still looking into this.  But I went ahead and did a tad more testing, and have a couple of additional pieces of info that may be relevant, and a question:

                       

                      First, I installed Acrobat *Reader* on my system and tested scrolling the same sample files I posted earlier,  Interestingly, I do *not* see a scrolling problem with Reader (11.0.09).  Scrolling is fast and zippy and no different from it is on a Windows machine, or using Preview on the Mac.  Also, when I highlight text in a .pdf while using Reader, I don't see the further slowdown I see when highlighting in Pro, as I described in an earlier email. 

                       

                      Second, since this problem apparently does not occur on all Macs, I wanted to mention that I have full disk encryption with FileVault turned on.  I've never experienced a performance problem with any program due to FileVault, but I thought I should mention it in case it helps explain why some Macs exhibit the problem and others don't.  It's super-time consuming and inconvenient (and presents me w/a security problem) to turn off full disk encryption, so I haven't tried doing that to test w/o it.

                       

                      Question:  Since Reader isn't showing the problem, and not all Mac users seem to see it, I'm wondering if a complete uninstall and then reinstall of Acrobat Pro might help.  As I menitoned in an earlier email. I've already tried that, by dragging the Acrobat app to trash, and then searching for and deleting every file/folder I could find that had "Adobe" in the name.  But maybe that's not enough.  If there's a better or more complete way to uninstall, I'd like to know it, and I can give that a try.