# Preferences for viewing PDFs

The Preferences dialog box defines a default page layout and customizes your application in many other ways. To modify preferences, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows/UNIX) or Reader > Preferences (Mac OS), and select the panel you want under Categories. For viewing PDFs, examine the preferences options for Documents, General, Multimedia, and Page Display.

The preferences settings control how the application behaves whenever you use it; they are not associated with any particular PDF document.

### Documents preferences

#### Open Settings

Show Each Document In Its Own Window

  Creates multiple Reader windows rather than opening multiple PDFs in one instance of Reader. This option isn’t available for UNIX. Each document is opened in a new window by default.

Restore Last View Settings When Reopening Documents

  Determines whether documents open automatically to the last viewed page within a work session.

Open Cross-document Links In Same Window

  Closes the current document and opens the document being linked to in the same window, minimizing the number of windows open. If the document being linked to is already open in another window, the current document is not closed when you click a link to the open document. If you do not select this option, a new window opens each time you click a link to a different document.

Allow Layer State To Be Set By User Information

  Allows the author of a layered PDF document to specify layer visibility based on user information.

Allow Documents To Hide The Menu Bar, Toolbars, And Window Controls

  Allows the PDF to determine whether the menu bar, toolbar, and window controls are hidden when the PDF is opened.

Documents In Recently Used List

  Sets the maximum number of documents listed in the File menu (Windows/UNIX) or when you choose File > Open Recent File (Mac OS). The default is five for Windows and nine for Mac OS.

#### Save Settings

Automatically Save Document Changes To Temporary File Every _ Minutes

  Determines how often Acrobat automatically saves changes to an open document.

Save As Optimizes For Fast Web View

  Restructures a PDF document for page-at-a-time downloading from web servers.

### Full Screen preferences

#### Full Screen Setup

Current Document Only

  Specifies whether or not the display is limited to a single PDF.

Fill Screen With One Page At A Time

  Sets the page view to the maximum screen coverage by a single page.

Alert When Document Requests Full Screen

  Displays a message before going into Full Screen mode. Selecting this option overrides a previous selection of Do Not Show This Message Again in that message.

Which Monitor To Use

  Specifies the monitor on which full-screen display appears (for users with multiple-monitor configurations).

#### Full Screen Navigation

Escape Key Exits

  Lets you exit Full Screen mode by pressing the Esc key. If this option is not selected, you can exit by pressing Ctrl+L/Command+L.

Show Navigation Bar

  Shows a minimal navigation toolbar regardless of the document settings.

Left Click To Go Forward One Page; Right Click To Go Back One Page

  Lets you page through an Adobe PDF document by clicking the mouse. You can also page through a document by pressing Return, Shift-Return (to go backward), or the arrow keys.

Loop After Last Page

  Lets you page through a PDF document continuously, returning to the first page after the last. This option is typically used for setting up kiosk displays.

Advance Every _ Seconds

  Specifies whether to advance automatically from page to page every set number of seconds. You can page through a document using mouse or keyboard commands even if automatic paging is selected.

#### Full Screen Appearance

Background Color

  Specifies the window’s background color in Full Screen mode. You can select a color from the color palettet to customize the background color.

Mouse Cursor

  Specifies whether to show or hide the pointer when Full Screen mode is in operation.

#### Full Screen Transitions

Ignore All Transitions

  Removes transition effects from presentations that you view in Full Screen mode.

Default Transition

  Specifies the transition effect to display when you switch pages in Full Screen mode and no transition effect has been set for the document.

Direction

  Determines the flow of the selected default transition on the screen, such as Down, Left, Horizontally, and so forth. The available options vary according to the transition. If no directional options affect the selected default transition, this option is not available.

Navigation Controls Direction

  Mimics the user’s progress through the presentation, such as transitioning from top to bottom when the user proceeds to the next page and from bottom to top when the user backtracks to the previous page. Available only for transitions with directional options.

### General preferences

#### Basic Tools

Use Single Key Accelerators To Access Tools

  Enables you to select tools with a single keystroke. This is off by default.

Create Links From URLs

  Specifies whether links that weren’t created with Acrobat are automatically identified in the PDF document and become clickable links.

Make The Hand Tool Select Text

  Enables the Hand tool to function as the Select tool when it hovers over text in an Adobe PDF.

Make The Hand Tool Read Articles

  Changes the appearance of the Hand tool pointer when over an article thread. Upon the first click, the article zooms to fill the document pane horizontally; subsequent clicks follow the thread of the article.

Make The Hand Tool Use Mouse-wheel Zooming

  Changes the action of the mouse wheel from scrolling to zooming.

Make The Select Tool Select Images Before Text

  Changes the order in which the Select tool selects.

Use Fixed Resolution For Snapshot Tool Images

  Sets the resolution used to copy an image captured with the Snapshot tool.

#### Warnings

Do Not Show Edit Warnings

  Disables warning boxes that would normally appear when you delete items such as links, pages, page thumbnails, and bookmarks.

Reset All Warnings

  Restores default settings for warnings.

#### Print

Show Page Thumbnails In Print Dialog

  Controls the print preview display in the Print dialog box. Deselecting this option speeds up the preview.

#### Application Startup

Show Splash Screen

  Determines whether the application splash screen appears each time the application starts.

Use Only Certified Plug-Ins

  Ensures that only Adobe-certified third-party plug-ins are loaded. The notation Currently in Certified Mode will indicate either Yes or No depending on its status.

### Page Display preferences

#### Default Layout And Zoom

#### Resolution

Use System Setting

  Uses the system settings for monitor resolution.

Custom Resolution

  Sets the monitor resolution.

#### Rendering

Smooth Text

  Specifies the kind of text-smoothing to apply: None, For Monitor, or For Laptop/LCD.

Smooth Line Art

  Applies smoothing to remove abrupt angles in lines.

Smooth Images

  Applies smoothing to minimize abrupt changes in images.

Use Local Fonts

  Specifies whether the application uses or ignores local fonts installed on your system. When deselected, substitute fonts are used for any font not embedded in the PDF. If a font cannot be substituted, the text appears as bullets and an error message appears.

Use 2D GPU Acceleration

  (Appears only if your computer hardware supports 2D GPU acceleration.) Speeds up zooming, scrolling, and redrawing of page content, and speeds the rendering and manipulation of 2D PDF content. This option is deselected by default. This option isn’t available for UNIX.

  Note: If the 2D GPU Acceleration option appears on the Page Display preferences but is not available, you may need to update your GPU card driver to enable this hardware feature. Contact your card vendor or computer manufacturer for an updated driver.
Use Page Cache

  Places the next page in a buffer before the current page is viewed to reduce the time required to page through a document.

#### Page Content And Information

Show Large Images

  Displays large images. If your system is slow to display image-intensive pages, you can deselect this option.

Overprint Preview

  Turns overprint preview on or off. The Overprint Preview mode lets you see (on-screen) the effects of ink aliasing in the printed output. A printer or service provider may create an ink alias if a document contains two similar spot colors and only one is required, for example.

Show Art, Trim, & Bleed Boxes

  Displays any art, trim, or bleed boxes defined for a document.

Show Transparency Grid

  Displays the grid behind transparent objects.

Use Logical Page Numbers

  Enables the Number Pages command for matching the position of the page in the PDF to the number printed on the page. A page number, followed by the page position in parentheses, appears in the Page Navigation toolbar and in the Go To Page and Print dialog boxes—for example, i (1 of 1) if the printed number of the first page is i. If this option is not selected, pages are numbered with arabic numbers starting at 1. Selecting this option helps prevent unexpected behavior when clicking Back or Go Back in your web browser.

Always Show Document Page Size

  Displays the page measurements beside the horizontal scroll bar.

Use Smooth Zooming

  When deselected, turns off animation effects, which improves performance.

Use Smooth Scrolling

  When deselected, turns off animation effects, which improves performance.

Related Information

- Setting accessibility preferences