Adobe PDF reader takes command line options

2.47.00pm GMT Sun 26th Oct 2008

There are some useful, but hard to find, command line arguments supported by Adobe Reader for Windows.

• Launch new instance: /n

• Turn off splash screen: /s

• Turn off open file dialogue at launch: /o

• Open minimised: /h

• Pass PDF arguments: /A

PDF arguments can also be passed in web URL.

The following opens the file at page 3, scales the zoom/zooms to 200% and without bookmarks open on the left. On recent releases of Reader, turning off navpanes hides the little icons down the left as well.

acrord32.exe /A "page=3&zoom=scale&navpanes=0=OpenActions" "example.pdf"

example.com/example.pdf#page=3&zoom=200&navpanes=0

Related Links:

developer faq

PDF parameters

Rob Van Der Woude