Can't delete PDF while being previewed in Explorer Preview Pane

Question

I've seen a few posts with this same issue spanning over the last few years, but none of the posted solutions are working for me. The issue I'm running into is that when my client has Windows Explorer preview pane enabled and they're previewing a PDF file they can't delete it. They get an error saying "The action can't be completed because the file is open in Windows Explorer. Close the file and try again."

If I disable the preview pane I can delete the file just fine, but my client uses the preview pane to know what to delete. This is happening on Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (21.001.20155) on a Windows Server 2016 RDS.

I tried changing the default PDF handler to Chrome or Edge but the preview is still being handled by Adobe. At this point my only option is to remove Adobe entirely and use another PDF viewer so that I can simply delete files. Any help would be appreciated.

default8a8y8ap7mr13 · Accepted Answer

I was able to resolve this issue without having to uninstall Adobe Acrobat.  All I had to do was install Foxit PDF viewer, which changed the default preview app to use Foxit.  I didn't change my default application so I can keep using Adobe, but the PDF preview behavior changed and I can now delete files while being previewed.

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