Viewing PDF files

Al_Chez · December 16, 2009, 2:37pm

I just upgraded to Win 7 and now can not view pdf files in the viewer pane. I reinstalled Foxit reader and am running Opus9.5. The active X control for plug-ins is active. I am banging my head against the wall trying to figure this out.
What happens when I click on a pdf file is the viewer shows it loading then it shows navigation to site was canceled a dialog box opens asking if I want to run Foxit from disk, if I say yes the main page of the program opens and not a preview.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

Leo · December 16, 2009, 2:56pm

Does FoxIt work for you within Internet Explorer? That is how FoxIt will be used in Opus by default.

There may be an option within FoxIt to enable it within web browsers. If so, check that that is on.

If you still have trouble, you can also install the FoxIt Preview Handler which is based on FoxIt's software and works in Opus (though it displays an annoying banner above the files).

PDF-XChange (via the "PDF-XChange Shell Extensions" installer in their free download zip) and Adobe Reader also install PDF preview handlers which work within Opus, Windows Explorer and Outlook.

Al_Chez · December 16, 2009, 4:42pm

Thanks for the quick reply Leo. The PDF files will not open in Explorer so that is where my problem is. Foxit is enabled for the browser so now I am looking in Microsoft for a answer. It sure has to be somehing in the set up but so far I can't find it.

erik · June 25, 2010, 4:38am

I have installed Acrobat reader, Foxit (Reader & Phantom). However, I don't have a pdf viewer plugin showing up in Opus.
How can I add the plugin so that pdf files can be previewed in Opus?

Leo · June 25, 2010, 7:44am

Try doing a repair install on Adobe Reader (I assume you meant that rather than Acrobat Reader, which is very old).

If it still doesn't work, do you get any PDF viewer within IE?

Which versions of Opus, Windows and the PDF readers are you using?

erik · June 25, 2010, 9:34am

Actually, I meant Adobe Acrobat, and yes, pdf shows up fine in IE.
I misspoke before, pdf does shows up in the viewer but it is very slow (~20-30 sec to display) while the CPU is at 100% (shared between Foxit Phantom.exe and csrss.exe)
The plugin I have is "ActiveX + Preview + Office + Web" (http://www.pretentiousname.com/activex/ ; is that yours?).

I configured the plugin to use Adobe pdf. Then it was very fast to display pdf.
I am a bit confused:

According to the plugin, it is supposed to be faster to disable Adobe pdf. I found the opposite.
How can I set dopus to use Foxit instead of Adobe? Of course w/o the long delay and high CPU utilization. Maybe there is some kind of conflict?

Leo · June 25, 2010, 10:00am

If the plugin is telling you not to disable the Adobe PDF preview handler then it sounds like you're using an old version of Opus. Newer versions favour using that method. (Older versions discouraged using it due to numerous bugs in Adobe's preview handler, but newer versions include workarounds & patches for Adobe's bugs.)

If you want to use Foxit, try installing Foxit Reader or the Foxit Preview Handler. Foxit Phantom is a PDF editor and so probably slower than using a PDF reader to view files.

If you go with Foxit Reader, be sure to disable the Adobe PDF preview handler in the ActiveX plugin config. Foxit Reader will then be used via an embedded instance of Internet Explorer. (If another PDF viewer is used instead, a reinstall or repair install of Foxit should make it take-over PDF handling within IE again.)

If you go with the Foxit Preview Handler, it should "just work", at least assuming it was the last PDF preview handler installed and another one hasn't taken over the extension. (You can put the extension back using the plugin's config.) Note that the Foxit Preview Handler has an annoying banner at the top of it, unlike the other options.

michaelkenward · June 27, 2010, 9:57am

I thought it might be worth passing on a lesson I gathered from reading this discussion and acting on the information. With luck, it might help someone in future who searches this place for help with PDF viewers.

I recently removed Foxit from my PC. I just had too many PDF readers, and now that Adobe Reader is supposed to deal with PDF files in Outlook I decided that I did not need Foxit .

So I uninstalled Foxit and Foxit Pdf Preview Handler.

Guess what. It broke viewing of PDF files.

I recovered this by simply running a "Repair" on Adobe Reader. (I have the latest version.)

So, if you run into problems viewing PDF files in any software, including DOpus, this is probably the easiest first thing to try. It probably mended something in the registry that got broke when removing Foxit.

After the repair I see no speed loss, even though the usual complaint about Reader is that it is slow and cumbersome.