New features summary | November 2020 release of Acrobat

Adobe Flash is now deprecated and no longer used in Acrobat. The various options available in a Form response file that were Flash dependent — Update, Filter, Export (All/Selected), Archive (All/Selected), Add, and Delete — are no longer available. These options are now replaced with the secondary toolbar having options to Update, Add, Delete, Export, and Archive the responses.

For more information, see Collect and manage PDF forms data.

The Embed Flash and the Insert Media options are now removed from the PDFMaker menu of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.

By default, Microsoft has disabled the ability to add Flash or Rich media content in the Office documents. If your document already has flash content embedded in it, Acrobat prevents embedding of Flash or Rich media in the converted PDF file and adds an image instead.

If you have enabled the Flash content in Microsoft documents, Acrobat adds a blank box in the converted PDF file.

On a low-resolution monitor, the dialog boxes are incorrectly sized and have layout issues such as clipped text or other action buttons like OK or Cancel buttons. In this release, the scaling issues are fixed, and a scroll bar automatically appears to make the dialog box options accessible.

Scrollable Document Properties and Advanced Print Setup dialog box

A scroll bar is now shown in the Document Properties dialog box and the Advanced Print Setup dialog box on monitors with 1024x640 resolution and scaling set to Larger Text.

Compact General Preferences dialog on macOS

The unused space in the Acrobat Preferences > General dialog on macOS is removed. The dialog box is now compact, easily viewable, and the buttons are easily accessible on a high-DPI monitor. On a low-resolution monitor, a scroll bar is shown if the dialog box does not fit the screen.

The following accessibility enhancements are made in Acrobat:

General improvements across all views in Acrobat

• Screen readers can now read the checkbox state (checked/unchecked) across all views in Acrobat.

Acrobat forms

• Ability to add form fields manually using the keyboard.
• Ability to change the tab order of form fields using the keyboard.
• Screen readers can now read out the highlight color for forms in the Form Properties dialog, and the Preferences dialog on Windows.

Scanner settings

• Screen readers can now read out the group labels, checkbox labels, drop-down labels, and slider labels in the Create PDF from Scanner settings dialog box on macOS.
• Screen readers can now read out the group labels, checkbox labels, and drop-down labels in the Create PDF from Scanner settings dialog box on Windows.
• The keyboard focus is visible on dropdown box values.

CEF views

• The VO focus is now visible in CEFViews like View, Reviews, and Sign, when you scroll down and click a file.

Reduced time to launch Acrobat

Several optimizations have been made in the core infrastructure of Acrobat. When you launch Acrobat, only the required whitelisted processes are run in the background, thereby minimizing the launch time significantly.

Optimized processing efficiency by implementing Asynchronous I/O operations

Acrobat now uses Asynchronous File I/O - Read operations on Windows. This implementation prevents hanging or freeze issues when you open large PDFs from a network location on a slow network connection. If Acrobat takes longer than usual time to read a large PDF, the following prompt is displayed: