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Participating Frequently
July 7, 2022
Question

Possible to Prevent Browser from Opening PDF on Server Side?

  • July 7, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 277 views

Hi All -

My organization has published a PDF online for our community to have a way to submit a particular document to us. The document has an e-Signature field which is not supported by any browser PDF viewer from what we can tell. The issue is that by default, almost every browser now opens a pdf within the browser instead of downloading it. We're afraid that community members viewing the document will be confused and not understand that they need to open the document in Adobe Reader or Acrobat DC to actually sign it.

 

Is there anything that our web developers can do to prevent a browser from trying to open the PDF within the browser and to instead download or prompt to download or open with their default PDF viewer (which is most likely Adobe Reader).

 

Thank you.

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2 replies

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 7, 2022

Did you try setting the download property in your link's A tag?

Legend
July 7, 2022

Actually their default PDF view is less and less likely to be Adobe Reader, or Acrobat Reader. On Windows, the default PDF reader is Edge. On Mac, the default reader is Preview. People will only download Reader if they have a really strong reason to do so (and just giving them a link won't convince them!)