Indesign 2026 does not open PDF or illustrator files

[Yigal_Levi]

I updated indesign to the latest version and though i read it can open pdf & Illustrator files - It does not do it.
PDF's and illustrtor are gryed out.

Is this features available only in the US?

It happened in earlyer versions of the app...
Yigal

[Willi Adelberger]

You should not open PDFs and AI files. Place them

into InDesign 

[Yigal_Levi]

I already know that, But if Indesign has a new feture that can open pdf files - I may need that oneday....
It does not open pdf files - so i need to know why this feature does not work.

[Gord@APL]

Can confirm that this feature is not geographically limited - I'm in the UK, and it's working in version 21.0.

File > Open PDF... also works with .ai files though, to be fair, I'm mostly saving those as PDF compatible.

Not entirely convinced of this feature's usefulness, though - where a bitmap has been broken up into sections, the conversion to InDesign creates large gaps where the image section doesn't fill its picture box. It's like that long-complained-about visual glitch in Acrobat, writ large.

[Yigal_Levi]

I do not have Open PDF in my menu...

[BobLevine]

You have to save as PDF compatible since InDesign is, like it does when placing, uses the PDF portion of the file.

[BobLevine]

Are you using an English language version of InDesign 2026? It will work in all but CJK and MENA versions so I suspect you're using one of those.

[Yigal_Levi]

I use Indesign with midle east language support (Hebrew).
I even tried to switch to English - and relaunched indesign - It did not solve the problem.
I do not have the command Open PDF and trying to open a pdf file via open fails...

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

Did you uninstall InDesign and then reinstall using an English version? AFAIK, that's the only way to get this feature. It does not come with the MENA or CJK versions.

[Yigal_Levi]

You are right. It is a shame that adobe always present new features that are not available in all languages...
Thanks a lot for the infornation (I installed the english version and it works...)