I have to agree that the Acrobat DC user interface is horrible. OTOH, the app now performs so poorly that perhaps managers decided to match function and form in a "creative" way. I recently tried to create a form, but had to give up--Acrobat would not let me save the created form (after numerous odd behaviors along the way--it's clear very little testing was done).

Asterion, I am sorry, but I think you are absolutely correct. I think many of the programs that are made these days are designed for looks and to entertain programmers--with NO consideration of how they are or will be used. I often wonder what programs the people at Adobe and Microsoft use. If they used their own programs, I don't think they would design them this way.

This is just another example of why the software industry is largely broken, from a customer perspective.
They don't give a sh*t about users — they no longer have to. They are a monopoly. Look at what Adobe did to Macromedia and Freehand. You have competition? Buy them up and shut them down. Who has the option NOT to use Microsoft Word these days? And they know it. So the days of the big software companies giving a toss about what users think are over. They can tinker and dabble and mess around with 'neat' UI designs all they want. These companies now exist to entertain their overpaid coders. (and they are 'coders', not 'designers'. No trained designer would have come up with the abortion that is the current Acrobat interface).

I completely agree. The UI is awful, uses up far too much space. And why, oh why did they add more bars at the top, reducing our vertical viewing space. If I have comments open (OMG, it takes AGES for comments panel to open) then I can no longer view a full size A4 page on my 27" monitors.

It is also very unintuitive to use and navigate. The whole programme is SO SLOW as well, what have they done?

Please get rid of this useless UI and move back towards the simple (and quick) UI of 9.5 or X.

Please bring back Acrobat 9.5 interface!

Acrobat has almost always had a bizarre interface but yes, this current one is the most absurd ever. It is baffling beyond belief.

I agree. Acrobat DC is horrible. It seems like a web page instead of a full, professional application. I am only using it now because Catalina no longer will run the previous versions. It never has been a very convenient program to use (very dated, for years...decades?) and now even more heinous.

After being a long time Acrobat 11 user, I bought Acrobat 2017 because that's the last 64 bit version that does not require a subscription and I wanted to upgrade to macOS Catalina.

And now I'm stuck with this nightmare of a childish UI.

Whenever I'm using it, I'm reminded how bad UIs can get and why I will refrain from spending any money on Acrobat in the future...

What a terribly backward move, Adobe!
It is counter-intuitive moving up and down a document using left and right arrows.
The arrows only move one page at a time. I need to move multiple pages at a time in long dox.
How to I navigate to the beginning and end of a document instantly?
Where did the TOC go?
It only minimally responds to the scroll bar on my Microsoft mouse

Things are at their very worse with Abobe currently. Think you're getting away with murder? You guys are going to pay for blooding your customers.

I have to click on 3-4 things to do simple operations like crop. Using Acrobat for 20 years this has to be bar far the least usable version. I cringe everytime I know I have to use it.

Adobe Acrobat Reader has the worst user interface I've ever seen in document readers/editors. My experience goes back to the very earliest editing tools, when computers were the size of refrigerators or bigger. The Reader 2019 updates fouled up a ****** UI even more. Did Adobe EVER TEST THE UI ON HUMANS? Or did their UX designers confidently invent something that looks pleasing to marketing and that was that? I just lost hours of highlighting on a long and deep technical paper because it's totally not obvious how and when to save changes. I think I reopened the same file by mistake and blew away all that work. What a piece of ****.

So now it's a year later and I'm so frustrated with trying to figure out where things are every time I use this program. Is it not fixed yet? Was there no response from Adobe? I have the older version on my computer at work which is so intuitive -- the tools are right there to be used.

What other options are out there?

AGREED. And barely functional. It’s so frustrating.

I completely AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It wastes so much of my time trying to figure out where the **** everything is and then going back and forth between tool panels just to do one simple task that would've taken me 2 min. ends up being 6 - 10 minutes.I HATE HATE HATE IT!

Awful, bring back the old version!!!!!!

Where did the toolbar go In Adobe Acrobat Pro DC? Can I go back to an earlier version of Adobe Acrobat?

Acrobat has like many things these days made the software worse by trying to make it better. I loved 8 and 10. even 11. this "simple" version is so bad. I can't even find easily how to sign something.

Elysia99 very good comment and followed up with very good ones from Alan Gibertson and others. Adobe clearly has a problem. I truly wonder if it is just that employees don't care or if it is a management style of that believes ANY change is a good change---no need to consider any negative consequences. Maybe we could call it the "Adobe NoNegCon Philosophy of Software Design".

If the Acrobat DC UI has any redeeming qualities, I have yet to find them. It appears to have been designed to kill productivity and increase frustration. Even after all this time, it still takes me about twice as long to complete almost any task in DC as compared with the same task in Acrobat Pro IX, which was already something of a backward step from Acrobat 8, or even X and XI, as awful as they were.

Not one of the many professionals I talk to and correspond with has had anything positive to say about the DC UI. The entire Acrobat team, especially the PM, *must* internalize basic UX design principles such as "form follows function." Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" should be required monthly reading for a year until everyone involved understands why and how to conduct proper usability testing.

If experienced professional users have a hard time with the UI, what chance have the less tech-savvy workers that we end up having to support? Other Adobe teams are 100x more customer-focused. Acrobat has long stood out as deaf to customer complaints. It's past time for that to change.