Properties Toolbar greyed out

Hi jacekw,

Control+e will bring up the Properties Toolbar. Are these PDFs you're having difficulty with created using Acrobat (Distiller or PDFMaker) or another program? Do you see this issue primarily with the Typewriter tool? If so, it might be a focus issue.

Hope this helps,
Lori

Thanks Lori,

Acrobat update from 8.0 to 8.1 fixed the problem, so this must have been a bug in 8.0.
The files I had problem with were of various types. E.g. scanned. Single page document had properties toolbar active, but when I combined these pages to a single pdf, the toolbar was inactive again. With acrobat version 8.1 there is no problem.

After updating Acrobat to 8.1.1 this toolbar is totally inactive when used with Text Box tool. How do I revert Acrobat to 8.1.0?

Ah! For other exasperated users who might stumble on this thread, I had the same problem as jacekw (Properties bar greyed out) and tried EVERYTHING and nothing worked. Just for the heck of it, I decided to exit the program and go back in, and the Properties bar was no longer greyed out! It must be a bug that is solved only by going out and back into the program.

I am still having this problem with Acrobat 812. It is:

On some pdfs when I click text box the properties toolbar expands to show font formatting. On other pdf docs it does not respond saying "no selection"

I have restarted the Acrobat as advised by the previous post and voila - the toolbar works in the doc that just before was not responding

Cnrtl+e toggles visibility of the Properties Toolbar and it is not an issue in this case.

Jacek

Has anyone figured this out? We have just upgraded our editorial staff to Acrobat 8 and they are all having this problem. The only solution is to quit out of Acrobat and relaunch. This is really difficult. Surely, Adobe must have a fix for this by now.

I think I may have found the answer to my own question of greyed out property toolbar.
This is what I think is happening.
The properties toolbar is greyed out because no system fonts are embedded in the document.
The workaround.
Go to menu | document - insert pages and insert a pdf document that has worked in past i.e. the properties toolbar was working. Now the properties toolbar should be active.
When you have finished the editing, delete the pages inserted above.
This works for me. I have created blank pdf with fonts that I attach to misbehaving documents.
Cheers, Jacek

When I encounter this problem I right-click over a blank area on the toolbars, select "Reset Toolbars". If the Properties toolbar disappears I bring it back by right-clicking over a blank area on the toolbars and activating it again.

I recently applied the update to 8.1.3 so I hope this problem goes away.

I am encountering the same problem with 9.0 standard. I opened 2 files and the properies box allowed me to adjust font size on the first file I added a text box to and not on the second file. Both have been created from the same program and have an existing text box on them.

I have tried ctrl-e to turn the tool bar off and on but that has no effect.

Closing and reopening the file was also ineffective.

Closing the Adobe 9.0 program and re-opening the file caused the properties box to function correctly as it did in previos versions.

Thanks for the clue,

I must report that the problem resumed even after applying the update. Has anyone found a fix for this?

I have had this same problem and do not see that it has been fixed. I can only save document and go back in. I do not need any updates. I'm running Adobe Acrobat 9.0 Professional. Please fix!!!

The solution offered by changobailado worked for me in version 8.1x It is too bad that Acrobat has not provided a patch for this problem.. thank you everyone ... I thought I was going nuts trying to figure this out..

I have also 8.1.3 and the bug still exists.
But your solution works well anyway :)

Is it possible to modify the default tool bar in order to keep personalized configuration after applying "Reset toolbar" ?

We use 8.1.2 pro. There is a glitch with the properties bar that is solved by 1. close and reopen the program, or 2. by deleting acrotray.exe in the running processes. The properties bar also glitches when you open two or more instances of the program. I've seen the properties bar on one screen activated by selecting the text tool on other file on screen 2. Adobe needs to address this issue because there are many times someone needs to mark up one document while looking at another. Ths hang is consistent on my machine and I've seen it demonstrated on others here in our offices.

I've been reading this post. I'm amazed that 3 years later this problem still exists.....

A few things changed in Acrobat (version 8 and later) that may be causing some confusion. First, the text box tool is now context sensitive and second the multiple document interface (MDI) was dropped in Acrobat 9. This means that how the toolbars behave when you have multiple documents open has changed. With MDI, all the document windows resided under the same parent application -- so you saw more consistency with the toolbar behavior. For more information on the differences between MDI and SDI (Single Document Interface) check out the following [url=http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/2008/09/mdi_vs_sdi_in_acrobat.php]blog entry[/url].

I have been using version 7 for years and just upgraded to version 9 Pro. I never had this problem before and now I am having it. I've read all of the comments on this website pertaining to Properties Bar bugs, etc. The only solution I've found is to either close and restart Acrobat (not acceptable) or reset toolbars. Unfortunately, when you reset the toolbars, you lose any button customization you may have done. That makes this method unacceptable too. But maybe it's a clue as to what causes the problem?

Im not sure why, but our company upgraded to acrobat 8. the problem with the properties bar is just drving me crazy. Really thats the only thing I do with Acrobat is edit existing .pdfs. You would think Adobe would have a fix for this by now.

I'm sure glad I found this post. The grayed out properties bar has been driving me nuts too using Acrobat 9.0 Pro Extended. I noticed the problem in my previous version 8 also. Closing out the program and reopening does seem to fix it, restoring the properties tool bar. I really wonder why this problem has been allowed to go on so long in the upgraded versions.