TexnicCenter and Adobe Reader 8.0

February 16th, 2007 | work | 29 Comments »
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(For my Dutch speaking readers: this post containing work related stuff on a technical software communication problem is meant to help out people over the globe and therefore written in English.)

Those of you who make use of the mathematical typesetting tool MikTeX (or a similar version) combined with the use of some version of the editor TexnicCenter will have noticed that troubles occur when viewing your pdf document in the new Adobe Reader 8.0. Nothing goes wrong when opening and viewing your document, but the minute you want to close the Adobe Reader or recompile your document in the TexnicCenter editor, an “Unknown Software Exception (0xc000000d) at location 0×7813892c” is thrown. The error itself is not much to worry about, but in my case it messed up my Firefox PDF plugin. The error is due to the fact that in your TexnicCenter output profiles the DDE commands you pass through to Adobe Reader 8.0 aren’t correct. These need therefore to be altered and this can be done as follows.

Go to Build -> Define Output Profiles in the menu bar of TexnicCenter or press Alt-F7. For the profiles that build a pdf file (most likely the profiles “LaTeX => PDF” and “LaTeX => PS => PDF”) go to the viewer tab. Here you have to alter three fields:

  1. In the field View project’s output enable the option DDE command, delete whatever command there is in the next line and write there: [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")]
  2. In the field Forward Search enable the option DDE command, delete whatever command there is in the next line and write there:
    [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")]
  3. In the field Close document before running (La)TeX enable the option DDE command, delete whatever command there is in the next line and write there:
    [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocClose("%bm.pdf")]

That should solve your problems.

Update: If the problem isn’t solved, check the quotation marks. They probably weren’t copied correctly. If that doesn’t work, you could try the following lines: [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][FileOpen("%bm.pdf")] for point 1 and 2; [DocClose("%bm.pdf")] for point 3. That’s what my newest TexnicCenter filled in automatically for me and it works with Reader 8.1.2. If you still have problems check underneath each DDE command the “Server” and the “Topic”. In those boxes “acroview” and “control” should be filled out respectively (thx Maarten for pointing that out in the commets).

29 Comments on “TexnicCenter and Adobe Reader 8.0”

  1. 1 jan said at 10:53 on February 22nd, 2007:

    beste,

    ik had net hetzelfde probleem met texniccenter en acrobat, maar deze lijken niet opgelost te zijn met uw voorstel. Zijn er andere pistes mogelijk…

  2. 2 Dikkie said at 12:21 on February 22nd, 2007:

    Ik zou het niet weten, ik kijk het even na (ook eventuele spelfouten in de post). Ik hou je op de hoogte

  3. 3 Dikkie said at 19:05 on February 22nd, 2007:

    @Jan: Als je copy-paste hebt gedaan, liep er inderdaad iets mis met de aanhalingstekens. Dat zou nu opgelost moeten zijn. Probeer het nog eens?

  4. 4 Felix said at 18:56 on March 11th, 2007:

    Thanks a lot , it fixed my problem

  5. 5 Michael said at 14:17 on March 17th, 2007:

    Very usefull information, thanks a lot.

  6. 6 Dikkie said at 16:35 on March 17th, 2007:

    @Felix, Michael: You’re welcome

  7. 7 Rune Flobakk said at 00:00 on March 20th, 2007:

    Thank you! Finally decided to try to figure this one out, and your blog was just a simple search away.

  8. 8 dhap said at 22:30 on March 21st, 2007:

    excellent, I was struggling with this for last two days!

  9. 9 Mike Murphy said at 19:48 on April 1st, 2007:

    Awesome, thanks!

  10. 10 Kai Mechel said at 14:36 on April 14th, 2007:

    Great! Thank you. That solved my problem after updating to Acrobat Reader 8…

  11. 11 S.W. said at 01:07 on April 21st, 2007:

    Thank you very much… this solved exactly the problem!

  12. 12 Jeremy said at 09:59 on May 2nd, 2007:

    Thank you! This error has been a real headache for me!

  13. 13 John said at 00:11 on May 16th, 2007:

    Thanks a lot.

  14. 14 Pieternel Verhoeven said at 14:30 on October 24th, 2007:

    Beste,

    Ik heb hetzelfde probleem, alleen met Adobe 7.0.
    Ik heb in de output profiles alles gewijzigd, zonder resultaat.
    Mijn file geeft aan dat het ‘damaged’ is en niet kan worden geopend.
    De error message is dezelfde als jij noemt, weet je een oplossing?

    Dank je, Pieternel

  15. 15 Dikkie said at 16:05 on October 24th, 2007:

    @Pieternel: Ik heb geen directe oplossing eerlijk gezegd. Zelf heb ik nooit problemen gehad met Adobe 7.0. Om het probleem te verhelpen kan je een aantal dingen proberen:
    * De wizard van de output profiles terug laten lopen, zodat de oude profielen er terug staan (die normaal gezien zouden moeten werken met Adobe 7.0),
    * Adobe 8.0 installeren,
    * TexnicCenter updaten.

    Succes!

  16. 16 Ibrahim Idris said at 20:07 on December 31st, 2007:

    I did exactly as you have suggested with the LaTeX=>PDF option still it didn’t work for me. I need further advice.
    Thanks

  17. 17 Ibrahim Idris said at 20:17 on December 31st, 2007:

    I did exactly as you have suggested with the LaTeX=>PDF option still it didn’t work for me.

    I copied all the commands in the relevant fields from my Texcniccenter
    2.6 and it worked with the LaTeX=>PS=>PDF option but surprisingly not
    so with LaTeX=>PDF option.

    I have Texniccenter 1 Beta 7.01 -unstable (‘Greengrass’), MikTeX 2.7 and Adobe 8.0.1. I need further advice.
    Thanks

  18. 18 Dikkie said at 15:05 on January 1st, 2008:

    @Ibrahim: That’s weird. Are you sure you didn’t make any typo’s? And did you use the correct quotation marks?

  19. 19 Ibrahim Idris said at 20:04 on February 22nd, 2008:

    I am pretty sure I didn’t make any typo. As for the quotation marks I will check and get back at you.
    Thanks
    Ib

  20. 20 Izi said at 18:22 on February 28th, 2008:

    Ibrahim: Try to restart TexnicCenter if the problem with Adobe Reader occurs.

  21. 21 Maarten said at 15:26 on August 6th, 2008:

    I would be worth mentioning that the server and topic of the DDE command need to be set as well. Which are “acroview” and “control” respectively. Without these settings the DDE commands mentioned above will not work, or at least dit not work for me.

  22. 22 Daniel said at 16:56 on October 4th, 2008:

    Perfect, this works for me. Thanks for posting this helpful item!

    PS: indeed, I double the previous post. You’ll also need to set the DDE settings to “acroview” and “control”

  23. 23 Sandra said at 15:35 on February 6th, 2009:

    Thank you!

    It is great!!!

  24. 24 Gokhan said at 17:56 on April 19th, 2009:

    Thank you very much for this page.
    I have been using Texniccenter 1 Beta 7.5, MikTeX 2.7 and Adobe 8.1.4.
    I did what you suggest for Latex-PS-PDF Profile.

    When pdf file is open and the tex file is then built using Texniccenter, it works. However there is a problem on my Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is open but I cannot see my pdf file.
    It is like to start adobe without file.
    I need to open pdf file again.
    How can I solve this problem.

    Info:
    Latex part:
    Run latex in this profile -> Checked

    Stop Compilation -> Unchecked

    Path to the latex Compiler: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin\latex.exe

    Command line Arguments: –src -interaction=nonstopmode “%Wm”

    Do not use Bibtex: Unchecked

    Path to Bibtex: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin\bibtex.exe

    Command line arguments: “%bm”

    Do not use MakeIndex: Unchecked

    Path to Make index: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin\makeindex.exe

    Command line arguments: “%bm”

    Postprocessor part:
    Dvips (PDF)
    Executable: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin\dvips.exe
    Arguments: -P pdf “%Bm.dvi”

    Ghostscript (ps2pdf)
    Executable: C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.64\bin\gswin32.exe
    Arguments: -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=”%bm.pdf” -c save pop -f “%bm.ps”

    Viever part:
    Path of Executable: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe

    View project’s output:
    DDE Command: Checked
    Command: [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")]
    Server: acroview
    Topic: control

    Forward Search:
    DDE Command: Checked
    Command: [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")]
    Server: acroview
    Topic: control

    Close document:
    DDE Command: Checked
    Command: [DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocOpen("%bm.pdf")][DocClose("%bm.pdf")]
    Server: acroview
    Topic: control

  25. 25 Arya said at 03:14 on April 23rd, 2009:

    Thanks!! Worked like a charm!

  26. 26 Jones said at 12:25 on June 15th, 2009:

    Thanks a lot!

  27. 27 Nico said at 13:50 on September 8th, 2009:

    Thanks a lot, this solves my problem !

  28. 28 Snowfield said at 14:57 on December 15th, 2009:

    Worked fine! Thank you!

  29. 29 Graeme E. Smith said at 23:32 on February 5th, 2010:

    You’re a genius! I’ve been trying to get this to work for years. It always used to, but something changed a couple of years back and I could never get it to go again.

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