Remove Acrobat Toolbar Plugin From Outlook and Office

After installing Acrobat Reader or Professional, a toolbar surfaces in Microsoft Office applications. It wouldn't be so bad except that even when you select to remove the Plugin, it comes right back after the office application restarts. Worse yet, the toolbar puts itself on a new line each time, reducing the usable window size.

Since I rarely use this toolbar and would rather open Acrobat explicitly to use the print, email, or save as PDF features, I got rid of the toolbar. Adobe doesn't make this easy, forcing the toolbar to always be visible, unfortunately you have to modify the windows registry. Warning, don't casually modify the windows registry; since it effectivley controls Windows and most applications.

1. Begin by closing the office applications.
2. Then click start, Run, and type: regedit
3. Browse to the below registry keys and delete each one.

Note that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is referenced as HKLM in regedit.

Outlook

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\7.0\Outlook\AttachAsPDF
  Value Name: OutlVisible
  

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\7.0\Outlook\EmailToPDF
  Value Name: OutlVisible
  

Excel

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin Value
  Value Name: LoadBehavior

Word

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
  Value Name: LoadBehavior

Acrobat Reader is Slow to Open

When Adobe starts, the application scan its plugin folder. Each API file that is here is loaded into the application, taking additional load time and much more memory. You can safely prevent Adobe from using these. The developers and product managers at Adobe stuffed several goodies which most end-users rarely use. I recommend getting rid of most of these with the exception of Searching & Form entry.

DWTips posted this, but I found the steps slightly different, here is what I recommend::

1. Close Adobe if it is open.
   
2. Browse to the folder C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\plug_ins
3. Create a new folder named Optional
4. Move all files (.api files) to Optional, except EWH32.api, Search.api and AcroForm.api.

Now Adobe should starts much quicker.