Reader 9 won't open PDF from web browser

Report · Jul 05, 2008

I just installed Reader 9, and now when I click on a link to a PDF on a web page I get this message: "The Adobe Acrobat/Reader that is running cannot be used to view PDF files in a web browser. Adobe Acrobat/Reader version 8 or 9 is required. Please exit and try again." Since I AM running version 9, this seems peculiar. Any ideas?

Mary

Report · Oct 27, 2008

I think these problems are the same, can anyone help me with this?
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6d5ae

Thnx

Report · Oct 28, 2008

If you have Adobe Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader 9 installed on your computer, both may be attempting to open PDFs in your web browser...

One simple resolution, as suggested by alvand is to open Adobe Acrobat, go to Edit > Preferences > Internet, and clear the "Display PDF in browser" check box.

This should solve the problem.

Report · Oct 28, 2008

Thanks for the reply.
But this isn't a solution. It's a workaround.

There are too many websites that can't handle PDF's not opening in the browser, like: http://www.nza.nl/aanbieder/GGZ/12364

And because the option is in Adobe Reader, it should work.. right?

Report · Oct 30, 2008

John Peter, would you care to explain to me what the advantage is of
having a PDF (or a Word doc or...) opening in the browser and not in
the program associated with it?
Secondly, what difference does it make to a website what settings I
have in my Reader? I tried a couple of PDF links from the page you
referred to, and they opened in Reader 9 as expected. What happens
when you try?
--
Noel

Report · Oct 29, 2008

For those of you who followed Kuba's instructions regarding creating a registry key and found it didn't work, make sure the path in the registry key matches the path to where you have Reader9 installed.

Report · Oct 30, 2008

I haven't noticed this problem. I guess it's been fixed.

Report · Oct 30, 2008

I am using IE 7 and had downloaded Reader 9.0, but was unable to get it to work on the Web despite trying the suggestions I found here. I finally gave up, uninstalled 9.0, dowloaded 8.1.2, set it to not open a .pdf in a web browser window, and now I'm rolling.

Thanks for all the help.

Report · Oct 30, 2008

Hi Noel,

The advantage of opening pdf's in the browser is that all our internal users are used to pdf's opening in the browser. If I change it to open in Reader they all start asking questions.
When I try to open a pdf file from the referred site "http://www.nza.nl/aanbieder/GGZ/12364" Adobe Reader opens and gives the error: "An error occured opening the document. Cannot find the file." This is with Windows XP SP2, IE6 and Reader 9.

I solved the issue now by opening op DNS to internet for the internal network, but why Adobe changed the way it handles PDF files in IE I don't know...

John

Report · Nov 12, 2008

I had the VERY frustrating issue of not being able to open a PDF in a browser window after installing Acrobat Reader 9. Looks like the problem was rooted in the fact that I had a browser open when installing Acrobat Reader 9, which seems to confuse things.

Solution (as above):
Uninstall Acrobat Reader. Make sure all browsers are closed, then re-install.

Suggestion for Adobe: if you need us to close all browser windows when installing your software, then make us do so! It took me nearly two hours of my workday to fix this issue!

Report · Nov 26, 2008

I had the same problem.

I had both Acrobat Reader and Acrobat.com on the list of programs. Apparently Acrobat.com is also Reader. I uninstalled both of them and then reinstalled Reader. Solved the problem.

I rebooted after each uninstall, although I don't know if that is critical.

Denny

Report · Nov 27, 2008

Ever since I've upgraded to Adobe Reader 9, I cannot open adobe files via the web browser. I need to be able to see my pay stub located through IPAY. An error or an alert keeps telling me that I cannot see the file without Adode 8 or 9. I had 5 and downloaded 9. So what could the problem be?? Please help!!!!

Report · Dec 05, 2008

We rolled out Adobe Reader 9 using Microsoft's System Center Essentials. Some, but not all users had this problem after the rollout. We were able to fix it by opening Adobe Reader 9 and clicking Help--> Repair Adobe Reader Installation. This fixed most everyone's installation. However, I still have a couple of users who can't open PDF's in FireFox... Go figure.

Report · Dec 09, 2008

After about 45 minutes of poking around and trial and error, we have it working in both IE and Firefox. The solutions:

For IE, launch Adobe Reader 9 and edit preferences. Under "Internet" uncheck the box to load a PDF in the browser (forces it into Adobe Reader).

For Firefox, go to the Tools - Options - Applications tab. For Adobe Acrobat Document, the Action should be Use Adobe Reader 9.0.

Report · Jan 03, 2009

I opened the adobe 9 reader and opened the help tab then selected repair adobe reader installation after closing all other tabs...now it works fine.

Report · Jan 07, 2009

Kuba- Is there any chance that you could explain how to correct this with the custmization wizard. I used your reg hack and it worked like a charm! I am just trying to determine how to fix my SI/GPO package. Thanks!

Report · Jan 08, 2009

well, I had the same problem and solved it
in adobe 9 (or acrobat ) go to edit>preference>internet
and uncheck the "Display pdf in browser"
then press OK button and exit the program

again open the program and go to same path and check "Display pdf in browser" then press OK button and exit the program

It will solve your problem

I tried this resolution and it didn't work. It did however by leaving the "Display pdf in browser" unchecked and clicking on OK. Now it seems to work perfectly.

Report · Jun 14, 2014

Thanks for the tip, I didn't have this issue ever then 2 days ago it just started to happen so not sure if some microsoft update or Adobe update cuased this?

It worked when I unchecked the "Display pdf in browser" I was able to at least open the pdf in Adobe reader, it takes a few seconds to download and open but at least it opens.

However when I rechecked the box after closing and opening Reader v9 hitting OK each time it stopped working again.

What I then tried is systematically unchecking both the "Allow fast web view" and "Allow for speculative downloading" and the issue seems to be linked with the "Allow fast web view".

What happens in the error I think is it really isn't downloading the file just showing page 1 as preview, then when it goes to download you get the reload / close error box.

It might think the file is already open...not sure but thank again for giving me a thread to pull.

If I leave this "Allow fast web view" unchecked and the other boxes checked it opens in the browser just fine..(have IE9).

Report · Jan 08, 2009

yeah i also agree

in adobe 9 (or acrobat ) go to edit>preference>internet
and uncheck the "Display pdf in browser"
then press OK button and exit the program

again open the program and go to same path and check "Display pdf in browser" then press OK button and exit the program

and voila but it aint quite so...

http://whipaah.com

Report · Jan 08, 2009

i have the same problem ,thank you for the help.

Report · Jan 14, 2009

The registry edit in post 53 worked great for me on Vista 64bit. thx

Report · Jan 19, 2009

"I finally got PDFs to work in my browser by doing the following.

1. Uninstalling Reader version 9
2. Installing Reader version 8.1 from the abobe.com website
3. I then had to uninstall via control panel add remove programs the adobe.com program, and I also uninstalled the Adobe AIR program.
4. I then checked in my Add Remove programs list and Adobe Reader 9 is still listed, I uninstall it again (why I don't know).
5. I then view a PDF file outside of Internet Explorer and I have to accept the license agreement in a popup window to get Reader 8 working properly.
6. I then go to a web page that links to a PDF file and finally I can view PDfs in the browser again.

We have around 30 PCs in our department with Adobe Reader 9 and some of them work in a browser and some of them do not, so there appears to be a conflict of some sort.

For info, I have Acrobat Professional 8.1 on my PC also.

Good Luck

ScottJ in London, UK "

Thanks Scott. I was having this same problem for weeks now on my football site. I think my problem was having a previous version on there and not uninstalling it correctly.

NFL Mock Draft

Report · Jan 23, 2009

Thanks Scott ...hoe come there is not more information on this issue.

I tried to fix this problem for 2 days and finally figured out that....

When I reserached this acrord32.dll problem all I got was programs for $$$$ to fix the registry etc....
but this did work for me also!!
. Uninstalling Reader version 9
2. Installing Reader version 8.1 from the abobe.com website
3. I then had to uninstall via control panel add remove programs the adobe.com program, and I also uninstalled the Adobe AIR program.
4. I then checked in my Add Remove programs list and Adobe Reader 9 is still listed, I uninstall it again (why I don't know).
5. I then view a PDF file outside of Internet Explorer and I have to accept the license agreement in a popup window to get Reader 8 working properly.
6. I then go to a web page that links to a PDF file and finally I can view PDfs in the browser again.

We have around 30 PCs in our department with Adobe Reader 9 and some of them work in a browser and some of them do not, so there appears to be a conflict of some sort.

For info, I have Acrobat Professional 8.1 on my PC also.

Report · Jan 26, 2009

This seems to work for me, and you can avoid to uninstall Reader 9 (drawn from another thread in this forum):
- open Adobe Reader 9;
- go to Edit > Preferences > Internet
- deselect "Show pdf in browser".
Now every time you click on a pdf link in an IE page you will be prompted either to read (with Reader, not inside IE) or to save the pdf file.
HTH.
Carlo

Report · Jan 26, 2009

I cannot view a PDF download in a browser window in either IE8 or Opera 10 Alpha in Windows 7 Beta, 32-bit.

I moved a copy of C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\Browser\nppdf32.dll to C:\Program Files\Opera 10 Preview\program\plugins and made sure the browser setting was to open pdf's using the Adobe Acrobat plug-in (note: I have Adobe Reader 9 installed, not Acrobat, but the plug-in is called Adobe Acrobat). Plug-ins are enabled in Opera.

I tried editing the registry as per post #53 above using the line for Windows 2000/XP. That caused an error message to pop-up saying that I was using the wrong version of Adobe Reader (or something like that), so I changed the registry entry back to what it was. Oddly, I was able to view a pdf file one time after changing the registry setting back, but subsequently I could not view any more pdf's in a browser window of Opera (or IE).

I also tried turning off "Fast web view" and "Speculative downloading", but that made no difference.

I am able to change settings in Opera to open the pdf in the default program AcroRd32.exe, and this works to open the pdf in a separate instance of Adobe Reader, but not in a browser window.

So far, I have posted on 4 different forums, and no one has even said whether they experience the same issue in Windows 7 Beta or not.

Is there a fix for this? Is anyone using Windows 7 Beta and able to view a pdf downloaded from a website in the browser window of either IE8 or Opera 10?

Report · Jan 26, 2009

But what if, like me, you cannot even Open Reader9? I tried that and I get the same "Internal Error" message from Windows/Vista that I get when attempting to open a PDF file.