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balidave
Participant
December 18, 2019
Question

Force Reader to be default viewer when Pro installed

  • December 18, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 6792 views

I have Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and Adobe Acrobat DC installed in Win 10 x64.  At some point after installation I was asked if I wanted Actobat to be the default pdf viewer rather than Reader and I said yes.  I want to switch back so that Reader is the default (I have my reasons).  And yes Win 10 thinks Reader IS the default pdf viewer as I see that in settings (see attached).  Even right clicking on the file and selecting Reader to open the file doesn't work as you'd thin -- it opens in Acrobat.  The only way I can find to open a pdf in Reader is to drag & drop the file on the Reader window.  If I go in Acrobat under Preferences/General and select "Select as Default PDF Handler" (which I don't want), a window opens and I get a busy circle and nothing happens until I escape out of it.

 

So somehow Acrobat  DC is jumping in there and "stealing" the viewing from Reader.  How to switch the preferences back so that Reader is the default pdf handler?

 

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1 reply

ls_rbls
Community Expert
ls_rblsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 18, 2019

Hi,

 

have you also tried the following:

 

  • If you have an Adobe Reader icon in the desktop, right-click, Properties, set as default.
  • or, go to your Documents folser, right-click on any PDF file that you've created before, select open with from the context menu, but make sure that you mark or tick the checkbox right below that that says to always open these type of files with this program
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balidaveAuthor
Participant
December 18, 2019

No, I hadn't tried that, thanks.  But just did, and still the same.  I even tried the latter suggestion doing a forced change: Open With and selecting Acrobat DC and checked the always open pdf files with this.  It opened the pdf with Acrobat.  Then I went back and this time did the same but with Reader, but still Acrobat DC gets the file by default. Anyhow thanks for the suggestion.

ls_rbls
Community Expert
ls_rblsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 18, 2019

What a pain.

 

At this point all I can think of is to make MS Edge the default PDF owner again, reboot, and make Adobe Reader the default PDF handler from windows settings, apps.

 

If that doesn't work move the roaming user profile that is usiing Acrobat Pro to a temporary folder and restart the application to reset its preferences... then try again to default Adobe Reader with PDF ownership.

 

Last, would be to either repair installation in Acrobat, found in the help menu, OR, mess around with some registry keys (last resort)

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