Reader XI: Removing Tools|Sign|Comment from Menu and Toolbar

Question

Has anyone been able to accomplish this? This is a rather annoying 'feature' of Reader XI

Answer 1

Guys, when you ask Adobe to be consistent and to allow easy removing of these items in the same way as toolbar items... You seem to overlook simple fact that "Tools" is in fact spam which is advertising Adobe's paid services, so obviously it's seen as revenue center. Gotta love sincere amusement of Adobe representative who probably really believes that this spam has value.
To Adobe rep: the users are never going to use these features simply because they don't expect this functionality from Adobe Reader. Adobe is not alone in this - many large software vendors make an effort to make their product the center of customer's universe, so they stuff it with all kinds of "value-added" junk. That's how Windows Media Player becomes a monster where the modest objective of playing video file is hard to find in the pile of libraries, catalogs, online stores and everything else. Makers of Winamp follow the suit by spending time of their developers on "library". You want to download driver for your printer, and this is 200MB "suite" with 20 constantly running applications that among other things check health of your computer and of course deliver oh so valuable "offers". It's not an overstatement to say that all these components are in fact spam and viruses - they are unsolicited software that finds its way onto user's computer without his consent, and it pursues commercial goal, so it fits the definition 100%. Ironically, the users are so concerned about "protecting" their computers from viruses that they buy commercial antivirus, while their system tray is already occupied by 50 "legitimate" "value-added" titles that bring their system to its knees. If those are not viruses, then what is. So, guess what, "Tools" in Reader is pretty much the same stuff, designed and created by the same spamming hands.
Your company would do so much better if you focused the efforts of your developers on the functionality your users really want - which is very easy to find on these very forums (and it's not anything even remotely close to the "Tools") - rather than listened to your "marketing team" , aka your own professionals spammers, who have no computing culture, so they recommend all this junk and convince your management that "it will sell". Did your company ever look at the sales generated by these features? compared them to the cost of their development?
Adobe Reader is very good product, and users like it - however they like it for very specific narrow purpose, and the fact that they like it does not mean that they are going to use it for other purposes - same as however you like your own car, you probably aren't thinking about using it for cooking your dinner. Would you appreciate if your car acquired a microwave occupying 1/3 of your dashboard? that's about how the users feel about your Tools.