Last week while working with a customer while riding the Amtrak Downeaster between Boston and Portland, Maine, I created a Version Cue CS4-based PDF review. This process has always worked great in CS3 and Acrobat 8, and this was my first attempt with Acrobat 9 and Version Cue CS4. Platform disclaimer: ALL MAC Leopard, CS4 & Acrobat 9. All up to date as is the OS. Network is DHCP on the train.
The review creation process went without a hitch, and I was able to log into the VersionCue server, open the PDF in the browser, add comments to the PDF, and exit the browser. I then opened the PDF again in the browser, logged in as another user, applied some more comments, and exited the browser.
When I tried to open the PDF from the VersionCue management console (open PDF in Acrobat is the button), however, the PDF opened in the browser and I saw no comments.
Intrigued, I tried to see whether the review had been added to my Tracker, and when I opened the Tracker, I was presented with a dialog asking if it was OK for Acrobat to use the keychain item related to the VC server. I agreed, and that's the last I saw of the Tracker.
Now, the Tracker won't start up. Occasionally I got these keychain messages from Acrobat, so I assume that the Tracker was still trying to connect to the VC server, but I can't see the Tracker.
Well, having uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat in hopes that the Tracker might reset itself, and after discovering that Acrobat conveniently remembers all of the reviews with which it is associated even after a reinstall, I dug around and found the following file on my Mac:
~user/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86/Collab/Workflows
I found the browser-based review that was causing the problems and changed the server ip address to localhost, where the VersionCue server resides regardless of its DHCP situation. Restarting Acrobat, though, and Tracker would still not appear.
I had resolved to confuse the hell out of Adobe tech support, when another idea occurred: join another shared review (not browser-based review like VersionCue).
So, I joined another shared review, and Acrobat opened and voila! the Tracker reappeared, but then died after I tried to delete the dead review from the list. Thinking more about this, I restarted Acrobat and disabled "Show Notification inside Acrobat" in Preferences>Tracker, and opened the Tracker. Now, the Tracker did not try to connect to the bad server, and I was able to try deleting the bad browser-based reviews.
Selecting one of the bad browser-based reviews, I clicked the trash can and got this handy message:
Without any guidance from the interface, I decided to go for broke and chose "OK." It was the right choice. The bad Browser-based review is gone, and my Tracker is back.
Lessons learned: don't try to start a browser-based review on a train.
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