How do I run Acrobat Professional and Reader concurrently

Question

I have Acrobat Reader set as the default application for viewing PDFs. This is good because, as a tech writer, I want to see PDFs in the app most customers will use to view the PDFs I produce. But I also have Acrobat Pro 9 and sometimes I want to open a PDF in Pro to use some of the advanced features there.

If I have Reader open, attempting to Open With Acrobat Pro just displays the PDF in Reader. Even if I double click the exe file for Pro, it just brings Reader to the front of Windows.

Anyone know how I can use Acrobat Pro without first having to close any Reader windows I have open, and without switching my default app to Pro?

Answer 1

Sorry, there's no (simple) way of having Reader and Pro side-by-side. Instead of changing the default application every time however, the following ought to be a time saver.

Have Reader be the default app for pdf:s, then, whenever you feel like changing to Pro: 1) End the Reader process (press ctrl-shift-escape, choose AcroRd32.exe and click "End Process". 2) Start Pro (Start menu -> All Programs -> Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro 3) Double-click the PDF (which should now open in Pro).

Answer 2

You could run one of the two in a virtual environment, like VMWare, Hyper-V, Xen or VirtualBox. All of these would require a separate OS install however...

You could try application virtualization, like VMWare ThinApp or Microsoft App-V. This runs the application in it's own isolated environment, preventing Acrobat Reader from seeing Acrobat Professional, and vise versa.