Also would be nice if we could dock "Tools" (really panels of Tools) or not.. like in Photoshop and Illustrator! Come on guys you've got Pros using Acrobat, too. Stop treating us like kids!

Hey, I hate this interface too, but a lot of the problems I see below (searching for tools over and over) can be solved by Creating a Custom Tool Panel (which Acrobat refers to as "Create Custom Tool"). It's really a Panel of Tools which appears on the right hand of the screen. I've done this and I put the tools I use most in that Panel. My complaint is I have to select my "Tool" of Tools every time -- it should just be there by default. And we should be able to adjust font size and choose whether we want icons or not and if so, what size icon.

I could not agree more with this! I was just coming here to say the same thing. Clunky menus that I can't customize. I do 508 tagging for accessibility and I work in Acrobat DC every day, all day long! The Reading Order Tool is too big and bulky. Today I started work on several forms, using the Forms Panel a lot -- I can't widen it. I can't make the font smaller, so I can't see anything !!! Obviously this is not designed by the same people who do Illustrator and Photoshop -- their menus are so small I can't barely read them. Can we have customizable font sizes in all Adobe product menus PLEASE?

Plus, I make a customized Tool Panel with the tools I use all the time. Why oh why can't I make this be the "default" always there Tool Panel ? So let's say I click "the Edit text tool." The Edit panel opens up. I'm done, I close it. No tools. Why can't my customized Tool Panel just be there. Instead, every time, I have to go to Tools and click on my Tool Panel. It gets to be a real pain and time waster when someone uses the product intensively like I do.

Thanks!

Adobe needs to suck it up, admit they made a huge mistake with this version, and fix it.
Otherwise, at least on my personal computer at home, I will be seeking other pdf viewing software that is more user friendly. And when I change jobs, I will be recommending a different software selection there, too.
Message boards are great, but only if we are being heard. Adobe isn't the only software company out there.

I totally agree with this, and I was actually logging onto this system in order to make this exact suggestion. The Tabs for multiple documents should have priority space over the "Help", "Feedback", "Login Name", "Home", and "Tools" buttons.

Is anyone surprised that most suggestions on this feedback forum are about the clunky, wasteful, and very user-unfriendly toolbars we've had to live with for a looooong long time? I pretty much agree with all the suggestions - I hate the large buttons, half of which I don’t even use, and can’t be removed.

We need more customization. We need a toolbar that's made with productivity and efficiency in mind. Need smaller buttons, which we can move around. We need a fully customizeable ribbon!

Take M$ Word for example - you can create a whole new ribbon tab and fill it with anything you can think of, and you can also hide it when not in use. Not to mention the extra quick access bar, which you can also hide at will.
Think about it - if a ****** company like M$ was able to create this almost 8 years ago (and even before then the Office menus were already pretty customizeable), why can't Adobe give us something a little more functional than a few large static buttons that are wasting space?

I agree with Dex. I need to be able to view pdfs on multiple windows, across 2 screens. With the current version, I have to print everything out so that I can compare documents. PIA, a real time waster, and paper and toner waster. Please do something about all of these issues. Having a comment board doesn't help, if Adobe doesn't rectify these major issues. They are not merely annoyances, but truly hinder productivity.

100% agree with the OP. This has been one of my biggest annoyances with DC.
I view most PDfs in half screen. When I do that, almost half of the tools menu space is overtaken by those HUUGE buttons 'Home, Tools, Documents', and the others on the right side. It's ridiculous.

Here's something else. If I enable tabs in Acrobat, then the pdf tabs replace the quick tools next to the Home/Tools/Document bar, and the quick tools are then moved to a separate bar under the tabs. In that case I can use a LOT more tools. The problems with that is that I don't want to use tabs, I just want to view PDFs in separate Acrobat windows, and still have the full tools bar.

I NEVER use the Home, Document, or Sign In buttons. Please make the menu customizable so we can shape it to our taste.

Anonymous: Where have you been?

For a halfway measure it has always been possible to dock the annoying window into the toolbar.

And the wast of space which is the Page Controls has been addressed and fixed. It was sorted in an upgrade some few months ago. (It was one of the first things I and many others complained about.)

Firstly make sure your Acrobat is up to date, then go to the VIEW > SHOW/HIDE > PAGE CONTROLS > HIDE PAGE CONTROLS

The page controls will now disappear completely until you choose to SHOW them. This gives you more room to get your chosen items in Quick Tools to stay in sight.

Dave

Agree.

The most irritating things about Acrobat DC to me are the popup toolbar that appears when you move to the bottom of a page. This stays up too long. While trying to crop the page, This makes it impossible to see objects near the bottom of the page which are often obscured by the toolbar.

The other major irritant is that when I create a custom action and give it an icon, I can't usually see it on the quick toolbar as Acrobat has populated most of the available space on/near the quick toolbar. I would suggest that Adobe uses smaller icons, allows a user to position a toolbar anywhere on the screen, and allow the user to decide which icons are displayed.

I've installed DC three times, each time thinking that maybe I was being too harsh in my assessment. But each time I reinstalled XI. This is not because I love XI, but because I find DC completely unusable. As far as I can tell, it does nothing that XI can't do better and easier, except maybe touch support. I have DC on my iPhone because I have no choice, and I never use it for more than viewing a PDF (and it doesn't show spreads). For years I had hoped that Adobe would come out with an Acrobat CC. Acrobat was always the ugly duckling of the Acrobat family, and it would have been so easy to make it better. The Creative Cloud apps, especially InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, are fully customizable and fairly uniform in how they look and perform. But then DC came out in 2015, and it hasn't improved one bit in three years. No designers and clients that I work with will touch it. My clients make heavy use of commenting on PDFs made from InDesign documents. XI isn't perfect - the post-it notes are often misaligned and long blocks of replacement text cause the screen to blink - but DC is far worse. There is often NO way in DC of knowing exactly what a comment is referring to. I can't risk upsetting my clients just to make Adobe happy. Acrobat DC is still polluting my Creative Cloud menu bar app. It is in constant need of "updating" even though it is not even installed. I would get rid of it if I could, but like all things DC, that is impossible.

David D. comments: "Anyone remember the infamous Illustrator 7? - Adobe stuffed up a very good product so completely by not asking the customer what they use it for, that they had to rush version 8 out to stop a mass exodus to Freehand and CorelDraw."

I own all three of the above-named programs, but still vastly prefer Freehand - and indeed still use it almost exclusively. Likewise Acrobat Pro XI over DC. FWIIW....

At least there is now this option for contacting them, and Adobe say this issue is UNDER REVIEW - so at least that is an improvement.

They have already addressed a number of the worst problems - at least you can now have some of your custom tools visible.

Unfortunately this has been one of those updates where Adobe forgets to ask the users what they actually do with the product, and so they let some clueless nerd make a pretty interface. (Anyone remember the infamous Illustrator 7? - Adobe stuffed up a very good product so completely by not asking the customer what they use it for, that they had to rush version 8 out to stop a mass exodus to Freehand and CorelDraw).
With Acrobat there are a number of very different uses - which have very little common ground in the tool sets they use.
I use it as "the Industry Standard software" for moving artwork files across the Printing industry and I have no interest in Notes, Signatures, and all that. However there are others whose use it entirely for edits and approvals who have no interest in the tools I need.
Adobe made the Schoolboy error of trying to create a "one size fits all" interface and forgot that the prime feature of Acrobat is customisation to a number of very different uses.

Yes, I did create new sets of Custom Tools on my Mac AND PC. But Acrobat Pro DC insists on running some "built-in" tools in that bar. So unless my laptops are docked to an external display, I can only see about half the quick tools I created. The button size (Compared with Acrobat Pro XI) also limits what I can load into Quick Tools. Next time Adobe runs an update, could you please make the buttons smaller. Hard to meet employers' LEAN targets when the software interface is not efficiently designed.

I agree there is so much wasted space at the top for all the bars and the bars are so large wide they take up what could be more document space.

Because so many people are complaining about the layout of the toolbars in Acrobat DC, I made a video explaining how to customize them. Customizing the toolbars is not difficult, it's just hidden. https://youtu.be/zpG3kDvmTJ4

@David Davies - Thanks! I didn't realize that last section was customizable. I could fit more if only the icons were smaller. Better than nothing though!

Chris - doesn't the Quick Tools function do that? Go to the view menu: Show/Hide: Toolbar Items and you have the option to show or hide Quick Tools, and the option to Customise Quick Tools.
This gives you the ability to put any tools you use frequently into a toolbar which will always be in view.

It would be nice to have a custom toolbar of commonly used tools available for every document. For instance 99% of PDFs that I open require me to go to Tools and select Fill & Sign. If I could I would have these tools available right when I open a PDF, with the option to hide the toolbar if I needed to.

Stepping past the Recent Files window is an annoying extra step that I have to repeat 20-30 times a day! Please PLEASE provide an option to not show that window!