Opening PDFs

[jmt356]

Hello,

I am not positive that this is the best place to answer this question, but I'll give it a shot.

For years, I have been opening up PDFs through Internet Explorer without havng to need to open up Adobe Reader. This has saved me a good deal of work (and memory space) by not having to have yet another program open.

Recently, however, I have installed Adobe Acrobat Professional, and now, every time I try to open a PDF in Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat automatically starts up. Does anyone know how to stop it from doing this and how to default back to the original settings?

Thank you!

[Matz]

Hi

I would try this.

Go into Adobe READER and choose Edit, Preferences, then choose 'Internet' on the left pane of categories - tick 'Display PDF in Browser', then OK out. If its already ticked, unitck, OK out, then go back in and retick.

Or have you tried that already?

P.S. how is this a windows 2003 post?

[diegol]

<hr>This has saved me a good deal of work (and memory space) by not having to have yet another program open.<hr>

I would believe that although the Adobe Reader application does not launch as such, the engine still needs to run behind the scenes, thus taking up resources anyway.
Personally I have disabled this "functionality" of the Reader a couple years back, so I cannot quite clearly remember, but I believe that integrating the Reader into Internet Explorer increased IE's promptness to crash.
I prefer downloading the PDF file and then separately opening it using a reader application.
<img src=/S/2cents.gif border=0 alt=2cents width=15 height=15>

[AlanMiller]

I agree with Diegol here - using the IE plugin to display PDFs in the browser (rather than in the "AR proper" user interface) probably won't really do much in terms of economizing on resources. But if this is your aim, then you could grab a <img src=/S/free.gif border=0 alt=free width=30 height=15> lightweight PDF reader and associate that with the PDF extension. Without a browser plugin though, you'll be offered the Open/Save dialog from IE when you click a .pdf link. Selecting either will ultimately take you to viewing the file in the lightweight alternative. You can still open PDFs from your HD with Adobe, by using "Shift + Right-Click" and selecting Open With... Also, OpenExpert might be helpful here.

Personally, if you want to go this method, I'd recommend PDF-XChange Viewer. I decidedly dislike Foxit now - their "free" versions have become progressively more crippled, with basic features replaced with adverts for their $$$ products. They got all of their testing done for free by the public and then offer to sell them back the fruits of their labours. If their software had a smooth end and a barbed end, I'd suggest they take their product and <img src=/w3timages/censored.gif alt=censored border=0>
<img src=/S/rantoff.gif border=0 alt=rantoff width=66 height=37>

Alan

[JohnGray]

<hr>although the Adobe Reader application does not launch as such<hr>

I disagree - on every new update of Adobe Reader it puts an entry into the Registry's Run keys to launch Reader_SL.exe, and I always remove it. Just like JAVA adds a Run entry for Java_Scheduler (or something similar). In neither case do you get told about it!

[diegol]

Hi John,

What I tried to state (not very conveniently) is that to some people it would seem the Reader application does not come into play when opening PDFs via Internet Explorer.
I believe in past versions of the Reader, when opening a PDF with IE a splash screen would show, somehow alerting of the fact that integration with IE does not eliminate the need for the Reader to launch. I'm not sure this is the case with new versions though.

[JohnGray]

Ah - I see what you mean...

[JoeP517]

Acrobat Pro took over as the default application for PDF files when you installed it. You could try uninstalling and reinstalling Reader to see if that fixes the file assocations.

Joe

[jmt356]

Well, since it won't save on system resources, I'll just let Adobe run. But isn't Adobe Pro a bigger program than Adobe Reader? Is there a way to tell Windows to open Reader and not Pro unless I say otherwise?

JMT

[Leif]

You could try right-clicking the file, select open-with, select Reader, select 'Always use this program...'