Double clicking PDFs to open doesn't work consistently when preview pane is open in explorer

Report · Mar 15, 2023

I found a solution to this locked discussion from user james-k-p posted on Dec 05, 2019 (see below):

"Hey All,

We recently finally took the plunge and updated to Acrobat DC/2017 2 weeks ago after years and years on X. Obviously we were forced to due to our office updating to office365 and my users wanting their Acrobat tab in Outlook back.

In any case, on all computers, including a brand new one fresh out the box, office freshly installed on it, windows 10 freshly patched out, Acrobat fresh installed, the same problem is happening.

This is a law firm and our paralegals like having the Preview Pane open in their windows explorer when dealing with PDFs. With this pane open, a simple double click on a PDF doesn't work consistently. I go to a PDF, double click....nothing...the preview loads...i double click again...50/50 shot it might open, might not do anything. If I press enter on the keyboard, opens instantly.

If I go into the Options of the windows file explorer and change the settings from double click to open a file, to single click (where it highlights on hover), same thing. A single click of the file won't open it....another single click...it might...it might not. So it's not a mouse, double clicking timing issue.

If I turn off the Preview Pane, it works as it should. Every double click (after setting it back to double click of course), opens the file in in acrobat as it should.

One thing is consistent, if the Preview Pane is activated...the first double click of a file (while preview is loading in the preview pane) never opens the file in Acrobat.

My searching has not led me to anyone discussing this, but this cannot possibly be unique to me and I would assume everyone could recreate this, it's just most users probably do not use the Preview Pane.

Please let me know what you guys think, if you can replicate it, and any ideas to fix.

I still have a few computers here and there with X on it, and it doesn't have this problem and never did. Thanks!

James"

My Solution:

The Adobe Acrobat preview handler is faulty and outdated, so I changed to a different preview handler via windows registry edit. Note that registry edits can cause harm to your computer if done incorrectly. I always export my registry as a backup before making any changes.

1. Export a backup registry in case you want to revert back your changes.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PreviewHandlers

3. The Adobe preview handler is {DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}. If you delete it, the explorer preview pane would be blank. The goal is to change it to a different preview handler that works correctly with Windows 10 (I think Adobe's was created for Windows Vista and never updated).

4. To change the preview handler, download another pdf viewer like NitroPDF free viewer. Once installed, find the new entry in the registry path above (Nitro's key was {D795AEC0-F031-44C9-8919-78C61F000214} when I did it). Double click on it, and copy the entire "Value name."

5. In Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf\ShellEx\{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}.

6. Double click on the name (Default), and paste the new key (Nitro's key) in the "Value Data" field.

7. This should fix the problem. Note that I actually did delete the Adobe preview handler key before I figured out the entire solution, but I don't think it's necessary to do so. Simply changing which key is assigned will likely work without deleting anything.

Report · Mar 15, 2023