Inspiring

Answered

Want certain PDFs to always open in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 12, 2019
5 replies
1407 views

Most of the time I want my PDFs to open in Acrobat Pro. But for a lot of the files I work, I need them to be editable in Illustrator and to open in Illustrator. It used to be that when you right click on the file from the Finder, if you held down the option key, it gave the option to "Always Open With" and I could choose Illustrator. It would change the application file association and bam, problem solved.

For some reason this stopped working a while back. I suspect it was at some OS system upgrade, but I'm not entirely sure when it started. We're on OS X Yosemite at my work computer and I'm on OS X El Capitan on my home computer. The issue appears on all three different computers that I normally work with. You go through the routine of right-clicking on the file, selecting "Always Open With" and selecting Illustrator as my application, but the next time (and every time) I double click those files it continues to open in Acrobat instead.

We're using Illustrator CS5.1. Upgrading isn't an option. Is this a known bug with OS X Yosemite/El Capitan and AI CS5.1? Is there any solution?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Monika Gause

This has nothing to do with Illustrator.

It's something in your system.

There have been issues with the file association database and the launch system. Please ask over in Apple forums.

meganchi

Legend

Did you try holding down your Control key when clicking on the file to open it with a certain program?

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

You can also just drag them on the icon of the app you want in the dock

J

jfrazeAuthor

Inspiring

This is not effecting the drag-onto-icon method. The problem is that it won't change the preferred app any more. There are numerous ways to get it to open in the specific app I want, but I can't get that preference to stick.

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

I understand you don't want all PDFs to open in Illustrator, so at system level the PDF extension needs to remain associated with Acrobat. And it was/is indeed possible to set a specific file to open with a specific application, separate from this system-level association of the extension.

I never used your method of using the alt key while using right-click and choosing "Open with", but I just tried it and it still works on my oldie macOS Sierra (10.12). I picked one JPEG file to open always in Preview while my system-level preference is Photoshop. All other files still open in Photoshop, but this one photo whips up Preview.

The feature is similar to using the File Info (Cmd-I) for a file, set it to Open with (without hitting Change All). Does that work, just for the sake of testing ? If not, then maybe this (and other) file's privileges are preventing you from changing anything.

I did notice that upon changing the (JPEG or PDF) file's setting that way, the system prompted me with this alert message (in Dutch):

It's that typical alert when you're opening a file which the system regards as an attempt to bypass the security, due to an "unknown developer". It requests to allow the opening of the file. Of course it's harmless, but the system needs to check it with you. Maybe this alert doesn't reach you, so the system cancels the intended change to the file's association ?

J

jfrazeAuthor

Inspiring

I'm not 100% sure I've understood. The whole issue is that the usual method of using the option key when right clicking has stopped working. It still says "Always Open With" and it opens the file. But it doesn't change the default application for that file as it ought to, and as it used to.

It would be nice to regain the ability to set this once for certain files, so all I'd need to do is double-click, or just command-O, to open them, and they'd automatically open in the preferred application. Used to be a nice feature. Oh well, the glitch seems unfixable until we end up upgrading everything eventually, I guess.

meganchi

Legend

When you Get Info and select "Always Open With", did you click "Change All..." beneath it?

meganchi

Legend

When you select your .pdf and choose get info, after selecting "open with" did you click "Change All" button below it?

J

jfrazeAuthor

Inspiring

No, because most of the time I want my PDFs to open in Acrobat Pro. But for a lot of the files I work with, I need them to be editable in Illustrator and to open in Illustrator.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

If you're on a Mac, right-click on the PDF icon and choose Open With as shown below. Select the Illustrator version you want to open it:

(Or get the mind-reading app which can read your mind. ;-)

Monika Gause

Correct answer

Community Expert

This has nothing to do with Illustrator.

It's something in your system.

There have been issues with the file association database and the launch system. Please ask over in Apple forums.

J

jfrazeAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks. I'll follow up on that, but I'd like to see some other responses, yet. It's something in the system, but it's clearly something in the system that has to do with Illustrator. This only occurs for me with Adobe Illustrator PDF files as far as I've noticed, and occurs on multiple computers under multiple systems. So, yes, I think it has something to do with Illustrator. At any rate, I feel it's appropriate to ask on the Illustrator forum in case anyone with a similar observation can shed any additional light on it.

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