The issue seems to be the difference between Acrobat "Preferences" (Acrobat Pro menu) – i.e how you view a PDF on your own computer – and document "Properties" (File menu) – the preferences, such as view magnification, that are attached to a PDF intended for viewing by other people. In the latter, it's possible to set the magnification for the INITIAL view. A problem I had was that having set the initial page view to 100% all subsequent pages opened at a different magnification. I resolved this in the first instance by creating custom navigation buttons to which I defined an action to set the zoom to "Actual Size". I discovered later that I could do much the same thing (without custom buttons) by defining page properties in the Page Thumbnails sidebar and applying the zoom action to all pages (Shift-click on all pages to do it in a single hit).

Hi,

The setting that Vivek mentioned is an application level setting. You can customize the initial view of your application as per your preference using the mentioned setting.

But at times, the documents themselves contain a preferred view setting. E.g. a document might specify that when I open up, I want to have a bookmark panel automatically come up in application. And simultaneously, my preferred default zoom level is 25%. These settings are specified in document's metadata. And to view the same, you can refer to Initial View tab of Document Properties.

Whenever found, the document level settings are given preference over system level settings.

Because of this, for certain documents, you might not be seeing the preference specified by you.

Thanks!

This is a reply to both the original question and the response of Vivek. I myself would like to have a view of ALL pdf's that I receive, in a format "page only" (i.e without bookmark panel) and 100% magnification. In my capacity as editor for an international journal, I receive a large number of pdfs to handle every day, which have bookmark panel and other magnification, which then I have to change manually in each and every case.
But I did not find a way to have my pdf reader this initial view setup. I tried what Vivek suggest, but it does not work. First, I did not find how to specify "Page only"; second, if I set the magnification to 100% in the Page Layout dropbox menu as he suggests, the new pdf files will still have their own magnification when I open them. Any comments or possible remedies? Thanks.

Hi

Acrobat has the option for users to set their desired Preference for Default Layout and Zoom.
You can go to Edit -> Preferences ( or Ctrl+K on Win and Cmd+K on Mac) -> Page Display -> Page Layout.
Choose your preferred option from Dropdown menu to suit your needs.
Please let us know if this works for you.

Thanks
Vivek