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.
How do you update when a new version comes out? Start over?
You can find a upgrade guide here http://www.nixadmins.net/node/336.
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.
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.
When the system startup it shows that installing acrobat reader bat when user logs in it is not found installed any help?
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.
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
No problem.