Installing Adobe Acrobat Reader centrally with Active Directory group policies
One of the greatest challenges in administering a large number of computers is software installations and updates. In this short hands on article I will take you through the installation of one of the more popular applications, Acrobat Reader. We will take a look at how to create the needed .msi package and how to deploy it enterprise wide using Microsoft Active Directory.
First of all let’s get the software and the tools needed to complete this. To set everything up correctly we need the Acrobat Reader and the Adobe Customization Wizard 8. Both can be found on . Follow the download links below.
NOTE: Upgrade guide available
Adobe Acrobat Reader
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Adobe Customization Wizard 8
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3564
Next install the Adobe Customization Wizard and fire it up.
Preparing the installation package
Now let’s extract the .msi file from the Adobe Acrobat reader installation file. If you downloaded the Acrobat Reader installation package to the desktop you can copy & paste the command otherwise change the path to match your system.
1. Select Run from Start menu and paste the following
“%UserProfile%\Desktop\AdbeRdr811_en_US” -nos_ne
2. Click Ok.
3. When the Setup screen clears select run from the start menu again and in the run field paste %temp%
4. Copy the Acrobat Reader 8 folder to your desktop
Next let’s change some of the .msi settings using the Adobe Customization Wizard.
- Open the AcroRead.msi file using ACW.
- Go to the setting EULA and Online Features
- I usually like to suppress the display of the EULA. Be sure to read the EULA before you do this because you will be accepting it on behalf of your whole organization by selecting this.
- I also disable all updates. The reason to do this is because we will be installing and upgrading this package trough Group policy in the future, and we don’t want users to upgrade to something the IT department hasn’t had time to test in our environment.
- I like the Open/Save dialog because I really want to choose if I want to download or just open a PDF. So I check that one to.
- All software purchases are handeled by the IT department so we disable the Purchase Adobe Acrobat feature
- You can check the other settings also if there is something else you want to change if not just go to the next point.
- Choose File>Save package.
Now you have a customized Acrobat reader package to deploy with Active Directory group policy.
Setting up the Group policy deployment
Group policy management console
I like to use the Group policy management console. You can just use the group policy editor but the management console gives you a good overview on how your policies are linked and a list of your policies. So if you don’t have it download GPMC SP1 from Microsoft
Install it to your server or your desktop. It really doesn’t matter.
Create the file share
To deploy the application it needs to be accessible to all the computers that are going to install it so firs we need to create a file share. Choose a fileserver in your organization and copy the Acrobat Reader 8 folder from your desktop to that share. In my example it will be \\odin\userapps
I like to use the share userapps since it describes what is in the share and it isolates the share from other shares.
Create the policy
No let’s create the policy to distribute the software. Open the group policy management console ( you can find it in administrative tools). Expand the domain and Group policy objects. Right click on group policy objects and select new. Name the new GPO Default software installations, because we can deploy all our standard software this way, not just Acrobat Reader. I also have a OU (organizational unit) in Active directory named Workstations where I keep all my normal workstations, this simplifies the linking of group policies.
Now that you have your GPO created right click it and select Edit. To install Acrobat reader for every user using the workstation we assign the installation to the computer not the user policy. So expand Computer Configuration – Software settings – Software Installations.
Then from the Action menu select New – Package. The setup will ask for the location of the file so navigate to the fileserver and the share where you stored the AcroRead.msi package. Select it and click open.
In the deploy software box check Assigned, this will install the package to the computers, note that published is only available when using user policies. Click Ok.
The package should now be in the list.
Close the group policy object editor.
Link the policy
We are now almost done. The last thing to do is to link this group policy so that computers in the organization start using it.
To do this just drag the newly created Default software installations policy to the OU you want to link it and drop it there. In my case the Workstations OU.
That’s it. You are done. When the computer updates to the new policy (cycles are 30-180 minutes) it will automatically install the package on the next reboot. If you want to try the package out immediately you can open a command prompt (CMD) and run the command
This will trigger the computer to refresh the policy immediately.
For questions on using group policies use the comments or visit our forums
Update guide
You can find a update guide on how to upgrade to Adobe Acrobat reader 9 at http://www.nixadmins.net/2008/08/20/upgrade-to-install-adobe-acrobat-reader-9-centrally-using-active-directory-group-policies/
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No problem.
Try checking Event log. And run Group policy management console to see if everything looks ok. I had problems with old network card drivers even. And do check that the computers have access to the shared folder where the installation media is located.
When the system startup it shows that installing acrobat reader bat when user logs in it is not found installed any help?
Thanks, I spent about 3 hours pounding my head against the wall, I had figured out how to extract the msi. But it wouldn’t install until I ran the customization wizard.
Thanks again
SixShotDoc
Using the Adobe customization wizard you can choose to have Adobe Acrobat precede the Reader. In this case Reader will install but if you have Acrobat Standard and open a PDF it will use Acrobat instead of Reader.
That’s how I have it set up at work. We have about 1000 workstations of which a few have Acrobat installed.
How do you update when a new version comes out? Start over?
What does this do if Adobe Acrobat 8 is already installed? I need everyone to have the ability ro complete fill-able forms, but I don’t want Reader 8 installed if they already have Acrobat 8 Standard on the machine. Is there any way to do this? I could install on every machine individually b/c there are maybe 30 in the building, and probably 40 % have Acrobat 8 standard, and most of the rest have Acrboat 6 or 7.
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You can find a upgrade guide here http://www.nixadmins.net/2008/08/20/upgrade-to-install-adobe-acrobat-reader-9-centrally-using-active-directory-group-policies/.
Меня невероятно заинтересовал ваш ресурс.
Можно списаться с вами в личке для более подробного обсуждения поста?
Познавательно написанно, я скорее всего бы так не смог.