PDF downloaded from Chrome automatically opening in Acrobat Reader

[michaelr73758304]

We had a user report an issue to our helpdesk yesterday, she was downloading a PDF document via Chrome, and the document was opening up in Adobe Reader automatically.

We checked the settings in Chrome and it was not set to automatically open Adobe Reader after downloading the PDF, and the Adobe Reader extension was not installed, so we weren't sure why this was happening.

On further investigation we found a setting in the Preferences - General tab called "Open PDFs automatically in Reader when they are downloaded in Chrome browser". Initially when we tried to turn this setting off it would re-enable itself when we closed and reopened Adobe Reader, however clearing the user's preferences from the registry and trying again worked for us. The setting is under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\AutoDocOpen - bIsAutoDocOpenFeatureEnabled dWord 1.

The user is on the current DC build 2003.006.20360.

Has anybody else experienced this, and is there any further documentation available about this feature?

[Nigel_WFP]

Here is where you can find the setting in Chrome. You cannot navigate to it from the settings page but if you have the direct link you can control the default setting here:
1) chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments
Enter that into a URL and check “open PDFs in Chrome” rather than “Download PDFs.”
This solves the automatic downloading problem but does not stop downloaded PDFs from opening automatically.
2) In adobe "Preferences> Internet > unclick the "display in read mode by default," save changes, and restart your adobe"
This solves the downloaded PDFs opening automatically.

[SteveFamilyMan]

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!! This was driving me CRAZY!! but your post solved it for me. I really appreciate it!

I don't know what Adobe's problem is...they're constantly shoving themselves into my face, constantly trying to be the default PDF handler, constantly trying to install the Chrome extension, constantly bugging me with suggestions when I do use Acrobat Reader. It's like just make a good product (which Acrobat Reader does not qualify as), and then SHUT UP and let people use it if they want to. And if they don't want to use it, maybe that should be a big flashing billboard for you Adobe!!

Sorry, I digress. Back to you Shelby...THANK YOU!!