Opening PDFs produces a message that Acrobat or Reader must be installed but the both already are

[Maddy5CCA]

I have reports from multiple users across our school networks that they are experiencing issues when attempting to open some PDFs from any webpage or within any program. Upon opening the PDF to view it in browser they get a message saying to view the PDF they 'must have Adobe Reader or Acrobat X or later installed'. The main issue being, it is installed.

It can be a new install of either Acrobat or Reader, freshly re-installed, repaired, doesn't matter. I have reimaged multiple machines trying to fix this. It doesn't matter which browser the user is using, (tried IE, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox to no avail). The only consistent factor I have found is that it seems to happen with PDFs that have been emailed specifically, or where the PDF has been generated from an email.

The users CAN, however, download the affected PDF, then open it in Acrobat, then edit it, then re-upload it. This is our current work around, but I need an actual solution as one of the websites our staff use for student attendance and confidential notes stores the confidential notes as a PDF, and for the site to work as intended and the records to be accessible and updatable while maintaining the correct date, etc. the users really need to be able to open their PDFs in the web browser directly.

[Bernd Alheit]

The most browers uses their own PDF viewer. This PDF viewers produces this message.

[Maddy5CCA]

It's specifically saying to view this PDF we need to install ADOBE Acrobat or Reader X or Higher. I'd say my issue is with Adobe here.

[Bernd Alheit]

Open the PDF file in Acrobat Reader DC. The installation of Acrobat Reader is not enough. 

[Maddy5CCA]

As stated in my initial post, that is what we are doing as a work around.

I need the browser to work with the PDF as it is supopsed to. A work around is not suitable to work with our system as it changes the entry dates for important records every time it is downloaded to be opened in the app and then edited and reuploaded.

[Bernd Alheit]

Contact the support of the browsers. They doesn't use Adobe software.

[Maddy5CCA]

I again refer you to the part in my original post where I mentioned that the message I recieve upon opening the PDF in browser is for ADOBE Reader or Acrobat requiring installation, complete with Adobe logo. If the message states it requires an ADOBE product, and has the ADOBE logo on it, especially when this issue is existent in EVERY browser, this is an issue realted to Adobe.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

On behalf of Adobe …

@Maddy5CCA,

Let me try to reiterate and summarize what others on this thread have told you.

The message that you are getting advising you that you need a particular version of Adobe Reader or Acrobat is the result of viewing certain PDF files in browsers or non-Adobe viewers that don't fully support the PDF file format (an ISO standard).

It isn't enough to simply download and/or install the Adobe software, but rather, you must use that software itself to open the PDF file, not the browser's own PDF viewer. Extend this to MacOS where similar issues occur with Apple's built-in Preview utility program which doesn't support the full PDF standard.

In the case of the browsers, instead of viewing the PDF file in the browser, right-click on the link to the PDF file and save the PDF file to disk and then open the downloaded PDF file from that disk location. Some browsers may ofter you the option of automatically downloading PDF files and then opening then in either Reader or Acrobat in a separate window. Regrettably, there is no workaround to  this.

And yes, this is inconvenient, but this isn't caused by Adobe and nothing that Adobe can itself solve.

Note that although an Adobe logo is displayed, that logo display is directly the result of the PDF file having a special page created by Adobe for this type of situation, most often for when the PDF viewer does not support either PDF XFA forms or PDF Portfolios.

[Maddy5CCA]

It's not just incovinient, it means we can't use these PDFs as intended for legal record keeping creating an actual critical flaw in our system because downloading it resets the dates on entries in our systems. We NEED to be able to view them within the browser and use the web integration as we had previously been able to do up until, to my understanding, this last year or so.

To add, it's not 'certain PDFs', it's consistently occurring with PDFs that have been generated from emails specifically, something that could surely be at leasst examined further with a little cooperation between yours and companies such as Microsoft given they are responsible for Outlook AND multiple browsers while y'all handle Adobe products, and obviously PDFs.

As a side note, that is hardly a "summary" of what I've been told in broken English by "others", or more accurately "other" being one dude , but thanks for an actual explaination albiet minus solution.

[justatu]

Just crosscheck and make sure you are not enabling portfolio in the process