Japanese versions of Adobe Reader hang after the trial link appears in the right pane

The Japanese versions of Adobe Reader stop responding after the free trial link with garbled text appears in the right pane.

Reason

Adobe periodically surfaces in-product messages for users to drive user engagement. During one of the recent changes, an in-product message that was meant only for users on the latest version of Reader was erroneously sent out to all users.

Solution

Adobe reverted the Reader in-product message change immediately after this problem was reported on September 2, 2020. The change becomes effective in 24 hours. Therefore, the problem will be automatically resolved by September 3, 2020.

Meanwhile, you can follow the workaround below to fix the problem.

Workaround

The in-product messages are stored in the following local application folder on the users’ computer:

C:\Users\%USER%\AppData\Local\Adobe\Acrobat\DC\SOPHIA\Reader

To fix the problem, delete the folder and relaunch Reader.