Fed up waiting for Adobe Reader to finish preparing the document?

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 1st October, 2009

One of the annoying things that can happen when using Adobe Reader or especially Adobe Acrobat is that the program insists on checking the reading order when you make a change to the file. The "Content Preparation Progress" appears and then you have to wait while it checks through the file and sorts out the reading order of the text. This is OK if the file is small, but can take a while if it's a long document.

Here is what to do to stop being bugged by it:

• Click Edit -> Preferences -> Reading
• Go to Screen Reader Options and beside Page vs Document, select Only read the currently visible pages
• Click Ok.

This sets Adobe Reader or Acrobat to check the reading order for the pages you are working on (i.e. often just the one page), which takes far less time than having it check the whole document.

Thanks to Stuart for finding out how to fix this!