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[Solved] No Scroll Bars on Adobe Acrobat XI

[Solved] No Scroll Bars on Adobe Acrobat XI

June 7, 2015 IT Support 28 Comments

This article applies to Acrobat Reader 9, 10, 11.

If you are reading a PDF document on Adobe Acrobat XI and notice that scroll bars are missing in Normal view as you used to have on earlier versions. Even you can still use mouse wheel up and down, or Hand tool to pan around the document, you may not get used to with them as scroll bars. This article will show how to configure Adobe Acrobat to have scroll bars.
No Scroll Bars on Adobe Acrobat

Solution

There are 4 methods which you can try to fix the issue.

  1. Do not allow a document to hide window controls
    This method will affect only the document that you configure.

    1. Open Document Properties by click on File and select Properties.
      Open Document Properties on Adobe Acrobat
    2. On Document Properties, select Initial View and make sure that the box Hide window controls is unchecked and click OK.
      Document Properties on Adobe Acrobat
  2. Do not allow any documents on Adobe Acrobat to hide window controls
    In some case, you are not allow to modify the document properties or you want to configure the option for all documents.
    Document Properties on Adobe Acrobat

    1. Open Preferences by click Edit and select Preferences.
      Open Preferences on Adobe Acrobat
    2. Select Documents on the left menu and make sure that the box Allow documents to hide the menu bar, toolbars and window controls is unchecked and click OK.
      Preferences - Documents on Adobe Acrobat
  3. Disable (toggle) touch screen mode on the document
    If you have touch screen computer, it is possible that touch screen mode is enabled by default. You can toggle it off and the scroll bars will be shown.
    Toggle Touch mode on Adobe Acrobat
  4. Disable touch screen mode permanently
    Open Preferences by click Edit and select Preferences. Next, select General on the left menu and change Touch mode to Never.
    Turn off Touch mode on Adobe Acrobat

By apply these methods, the scroll bars should be appear on Adobe Acrobat. If you still have the issue with scroll bars on Adobe Acrobat, feel free to post comment below.
Scroll Bars is visible on Adobe Acrobat

28 Comments

  1. James December 31, 2015

    Thank you! This was my morning project. I never would have found that on my own.

  2. Paul March 2, 2016

    Thank you.

  3. none October 8, 2016

    Thanky you

  4. Joe C January 24, 2017

    I am a very technically oriented person and yet this issue has made me feel totally stupid. I want to say THANK YOU for taking the time to post this. So helpful. Mine was just the touch mode being clicked. Who knew? You are a GEM. THANK YOU-THANK YOU-THANK-YOU..

  5. Dom February 4, 2017

    Thanks !

  6. Misha February 11, 2017

    Hi – Thanks a lot. This did the trick. Appreciate you explaining it so clearly. I spent two hours trying to fix the problem myself. it took two minutes after reading your help guide.

  7. Anthony February 23, 2017

    This info was great, thank you so much.

  8. Rose March 15, 2017

    Best ever. Thanks!

  9. Thomas Jayabhai June 2, 2017

    Thank you so much for your step by step explanation – God Bless.

  10. Jules June 28, 2017

    Thank you, the information was spot on and a real help.

  11. Najeeb H. Ahmed May 22, 2018

    Thanks a lot you helpful guys , appreciate that so much .

  12. Amit Kumar Dongre June 11, 2018

    thanks a lot. it was driving me crazy

  13. Veronika June 22, 2018

    Thank you so much. You saved my day.

  14. MOnica July 13, 2018

    will this method work on the scrollbar in the Page thumbnail view? My scrollbar is missing from this.

  15. nisamudeen July 29, 2018

    Thank you…..

  16. florda November 14, 2018

    Hi, thank you for putting all of the solution together. Yet I’m still encountering issue with missing scroll bar after taking all of the above step.. I also tried the view->page display->enable scrolling, but I don’t have a selection for that in my version of acrobat. My version is 2015.005.30452. Thank you for any advice.

  17. abuturaab November 15, 2018

    Hi Florda, close the application and open again. I too experienced the same issue. After restarting the app, it’s gone.

  18. A Ray December 9, 2018

    Amazed and appreciative that this worked!!! Thank you for giving several examples of how to get the scroll bar back on the program. Thanks a ton. A. Ray

  19. Hiram February 8, 2019

    Godbless you for such a complete explanation to this quirky problem. Adobe has nothing explaining this. I’ve been trying to figure this out for a long time. Thank you!

  20. Josie Chaney April 5, 2019

    Thank you!!!

  21. Jennifer Lester June 25, 2019

    Thank you!

  22. Will Mak August 20, 2019

    Thank you so much!!!

  23. Bob August 25, 2019

    Thank you very much! It helped and I am saved. Praise The Lord!

  24. Robby October 11, 2019

    this article is really helpful and solve the problem, thanks..

  25. Linda June 12, 2020

    Thank you thank you for posting this!!! I’ve been trying to get scroll bars back and NOTHING WORKED! Other website suggestions didn’t work. But your Never Auto detect Touch mode fixed it. thank you!!! I no longer curse now when I try to read a pdf document.

  26. stephanie garbarini September 18, 2020

    OMG THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to do all the steps. out of no where it stops working

  27. Sergio November 24, 2020

    Thank you!
    Having added a little inches touch monitor to the PC I “lost” the scrollbar without noticing “touch” button enabled. Clicking on the button, my scrollbar showed again 🙂

  28. Johnny123 February 11, 2021

    Thank you. You provided a resolution not commonly published. Un-clicking:
    –>Preferences – Documents – Allow documents to hide the menu bar, toolbars, and windows controls
    was the trick.
    The State of Colorado tax forms are published in a way to hide the scroll bar for some odd reason, and it is (was!!) quite annoying.

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