Adobe PDF Printer Missing

Owned by Robert Stepnoski
Last updated: Jan 31, 2023 by Courtney Morshed

On occasion, when installing Adobe Acrobat 9.x (as well as some other versions) the application will fail to install the “Adobe PDF” printer that typically resides in your Printers and Faxes folder in Windows XP.  This not only prevents Acrobat from creating any PDF files, but it also breaks the PDFMaker plugin functionality that gets added to Office when installing Acrobat.

The following will help you restore the missing PDF printer:

1) Open the Printers and Faxes dialog box and select Add a Printer

2) Click Next then select Local printer attached to this computer, and deselect the Automatically detect and install my Plug and play printer box.  Click Next.

3) In the port selection box, choose My Documents*.pdf (Adobe PDF) and click Next.

4) On the following screen, select Have Disk. Click Browse then navigate to the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Xtras\AdobePDF folder and highlight the AdobePDF.inf file.  Click Open, then OK.

5) When presented with a list of Adobe PDF Converter options, select the first item from the list and click Next.

6) When prompted for a printer name, change the value to Adobe PDF.  Naming it anything else will break the Office plugin functionality.

7) Click Next through the remaining dialog boxes, selecting the appropriate options for your configuration as you go along.

At this point, the printer should be installed.  If the application is requesting files from your Windows CD, you will need to locate the proper files for your service pack level either by browsing on your computer or downloading then extracting the service pack executable.  This portion of the install varies by computer as I have had the install require these additional files about half the time.

If you are later prompted for the ADPDF9.PPD file, it can be found in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Xtras\AdobePDF\StdPPD folder.

That should be it.  once you have finished the installation and provided Windows with the additional files if needed, you should be well on your way to creating PDFs!

Updated solution for version 10:

Solution 1

Repair the Acrobat installation using the option in the Help menu.

Solution 2

Uninstall and then re-install Acrobat on your Windows OS.

Solution 3

Manually install the PDF Printer

  • Click Start >  Control Panel > Devices and Printers
  • Select Add a printer
  • Select Add a local printer
  • Check Use an existing port and select Documents\*.pdf (Adobe PDF) from the drop down.  Click Next
  • Click the Have Disk… button
  • Click the Browse… button
  • Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\Xtras\AdobePDF
  • Select AdobePDF.inf from the list, then click the OK button
  • You will see many Adobe PDF Converters in the list, however count six down from the top and click Next (you may need to try this numerous times to find the correct Converter from the list that works with your version of Windows)
  • Name your printer, e.g. Adobe PDF
  • Follow the rest of the prompts and your PDF printer should now be installed correctly

If you are later prompted for the ADPDF9.PPD file, it can be found in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\Xtras\AdobePDF\<OS version> folders.