Switching to your preferred page mode in Adobe Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC often disables continuous scrolling. This is not ideal when editing or reviewing multiple PDF documents with pages popping up at the top of the screen constantly – things can quickly get confused. This means that you have to spend precious seconds repeatedly to access the Acrobat menu bar just to reactivate the ability to scroll normally.
Fortunately, Adobe Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC allow you to enable scrolling for your preferred default page mode. You can also add quick shortcuts to enable scrolling right on the Acrobat toolbar itself. Let’s see how exactly you should do it all below.
At the time of writing, the latest versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro / Standard DC and Acrobat Reader DC hold pages wide with continuous scrolling enabled. But if you choose to switch to another page mode (Fit a whole page, Display of a single page or Display of two pages), scrolling will be disabled.
This applies in particular to the Fit One Full Page mode (accessible via the Page display modes menu), which offers no additional option to change the mode with the scrolling activated directly, unlike the display on a page and the two-page display.
If you don’t want to waste time not only changing page modes, but also enabling continuous scrolling over and over again, you can override the default page display settings via the Preferences panel in Acrobat. The following steps should show you how.
Step 1: Open the Edit menu in Adobe Acrobat DC or Acrobat Reader DC, then click Preferences.
2nd step: Click the Accessibility side tab.
Step 3: Under the Replace page display section, select the “Always use layout style” check box. Depending on the page mode you want, use the drop-down menu next to it to select either one continuous page or two continuous pages.
A single continuous page displays a single page, while Two continuous pages presents two pages side by side. Both options also have continuous scrolling enabled by default.
Step 4: Under the same section, check the box next to “Always use zoom settings”. Then select your preferred zoom setting.
Note: You can skip this step if you want to stick to the default zoom setting on one page or two pages.
For example, Fit Page adapts an entire page by default, while Reflow moves text while resizing or zooming in / out on a page. You may want to come back and tweak these options to find the setting that works best for you.
Step 5: Click OK to save your changes.
And that’s all. Adobe Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC will always open PDF documents in your preferred page view mode with scrolling enabled by default.
Despite the configuration of a page mode in Adobe Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC which always scrolls by default, you will still want to change the page mode while actively viewing certain PDF documents. Again, this may end up disabling continuous scrolling.
However, you can solve the problem to a certain extent by placing dedicated shortcuts that will allow the scrolling of Fit One Full Page, Single Page View or Two Page View page modes directly on the Acrobat user interface.
Start by right-clicking an empty area on the Acrobat toolbar. In the context menu that appears, point to Page display tools, then select Activate scrolling and two-page scrolling.
This should put two dedicated icons that you can easily use to switch to View One Page or View Two Pages with scrolling enabled. You can also use the Single page view shortcut to enable continuous scrolling after using the Fit an entire page option.
Note: If you do not see the options listed above, you may want to update Adobe Acrobat DC or Acrobat Reader DC to their latest versions. Open the Help menu, then click Check for Updates.
Mobile versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader / Premium for Android and iOS come with continuous scrolling that has already been enabled by default.
But if you seem to be stuck in Single Page view, just tap the Page View icon at the top of the app while viewing a PDF document, then tap Continuous Scroll. This should re-enable continuous scrolling.
Overriding the default page settings in Adobe Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC should help you avoid having to switch page modes manually with scrolling enabled at all times. Also putting some dedicated icons that allow scrolling for your preferred page display mode should work wonders.
While you’re at it, you can also look for ways to get rid of the annoying Tools pane of Acrobat Reader DC. This is a terrible user interface design implementation that you should seriously consider permanently deleting to do any serious work.
Then:
PDFelement is a great alternative to Adobe Acrobat DC. Find out how these two PDF editors compare.
Last updated on June 21, 2020
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