How to add acrobat to windows 7 home pro default programs list

Question

I have lost the ability to set Acrobat as the default program for opening pdf files.  I can do it with manual "open with", however I cannot set it as the default to do it automatically through any of the windows options.  I found that Acrobat is not listed as one of the windows default rpgrams and would like to be able to add to that list.  Does anyone know how to do that?  I assume it requires a registry change but I don't know where.
Thanks for your help
Jerry

Answer 1

The last item about PDF Maker files missing is another matter altogether. You really need to indicate what version of OFFICE you are using (usually where PDF Maker is used). With AA9, you can only use PDF Maker with OFFICE 2007 or earlier. AA9 is not compatible with OFFICE 2010. So adequate information is needed to give an answer. I suspect that you may have OFFICE 2010 or are using a 64-bit version of OFFICE that is also a compatibility issue for PDF Maker unless you upgrade to AA X.
The last screen Rufus shows is not available in Win7. They moved that functionality to the Control Panel as I indicated in an earlier post. But you would in a similar manner go to the set Associations and see a long list of file types. You would select the PDF type and then edit the association. You would select Acrobat.exe and not AcroRd32.exe as your default association for PDF files. Reinstalling Reader just messes things up and should generally not even be installed when you have AA9. AA X is the first version that really has allowed both Acrobat and Reader due to some compatibility issues. Usually it is best to just stay with Acrobat and not have Reader on your system. If you do uninstall Reader, you will likely have to do a Repair to Acrobat.