When I save a word document as a PDF I'm forced to immediately download the PDF - How to change?

Question

I guess that this title says it all. When my users save a document as a PDF in a workspace, they immediately get a download dialogue asking if they wish to download the PDF. This is unexpected, and very annoying behaviour.

Can this be changed?

Answer 1

This is a known issue. It can be fixed by going to the Web Application General Settings and setting the Browser File Handling to permissive.

I've also been told that it can be left at strict, but through PowerShell, add a white list exception for PDFs. I haven't stumbled across that though.

Answer 2

You can do this at the list level in SharePoint 2010. Try this...

$web = Get-SPWeb https://domain-name.com/site/web
$list = $web.Lists["Library Name"]
$list.BrowserFileHandling = "Permissive"
$list.Update();

Gets a value that specifies the override of the web application’s BrowserFileHandling property at the list level.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.client.list.browserfilehandling.aspx

You may then need to go to Document Library Settings >> Advanced Settings >> Opening Documents in the Browser and set it to Open in browser.

In my browser, however, I get the "read only or edit" prompt as it appears Acrobat understands SharePoint and is prompting me to check the file out.

If you added the PDF icon to the docicon.xml file and you do not want to be prompted to edit the file you can add this

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif" OpenControl=""/>

to the docicon.xml file. With the OpenControl attribute set to "" Acrobat opens in the browser. Some articles suggest that you cannot set a list/library to be Permissive if the WebApp level is set to Strict but that is not so. My WebApp is set to Strict but when I click on a PDF it opens in the browser in the library I have set to Permissive.