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Friday, March 15, 2013

WinShell cannot start AcrobatReader XI

When I tried to launch Acrobat Reader from WinShell, I got the following error message:
Cannot start AcrobatReader or open the document.
1. Please check on the exe file and cmd line of the PDFView options.
2. Please set correct Adobe DDE Version in registry key 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\acrobat\shell\open\ddeexec\application'
Seems that the solution is quite straightforward:
  1. Make sure the Acrobat Reader is already running before calling it from WinShell (just run the Acrobat Reader from the start menu once, and keep it running).
  2. Edit the registry entry as mentioned in the error message. For example, in my case, I found that the value of my Acrobat Reader was set to AcroViewR10. Since I am using version 11, I have to change the value to AcroViewR11.
That's all :)