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Unable to Open PDF Files in Web Browser? Solve It Easily!

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web browsersCannot open PDF in web browser? This problem can appear in several ways, mainly including the following symptoms:
1. A blank page in the web browser.
2. A broken object link (for example, a red square, a blue triangle, or a blue circle).
3. A red X icon.
4. Error: "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."

For common issues, you can just restart your computer and try opening the PDF files again. If it fails, you can try to open another PDF file, if other files can be open, we can assert that the web browser is just ok and the first PDF may be damaged. Download the PDF again from the website. If you are still disabled to open it, go on reading the following solutions:

Solution 1. Make sure upgrade Adobe Reader together with your web browser

Check if you have updated your Adobe Reader or the plug-in PDF reader in web browser after you updating your web browser. You’d better always use the latest version of these programs. But please note every version has a corresponding system requirement. For example, Microsoft Windows 7 requires Adobe Reader 9.2 or later. You can go to Adobe Downloading site to do these updates. Before updating or reinstalling, you should remove multiple version of Reader or Acrobat since Adobe doesn’t support them.

Solution 2. Check the registry path for Acrobat or Reader

Check the settings of your web browser to ensure if registry settings rightly tell the browser where to find Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. Modify the registry like this: Go to Start, click "Run" and input "regedit". Browse to the key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\Exe. Make sure that the default paths of Acrobat or Reader are:
The default path for Reader is "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe".
The default path for Acrobat is "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe".

Solution 3. Enable the plug-in software for Adobe Reader or PDF viewer

Check the settings of your web browser to ensure that the plug-in software for Adobe Reader or PDF viewer is enabled. Browsers from different companies keep these settings in different places. You can find it within the web browser. For example, in Chrome, type in "about: plugins" (without the quotations), you can find all of these plug-ins for Chrome, of course, including Adobe Reader. Enable it.

Solution 4. View another PDF from a different web server

You can try to open a PDF file from another different web server to see if the fundamental cause is on the server that you are connecting. Open a PDF file from the web site of Adobe. If the PDF files can be displayed from this site, then we can deduce that the other site's server may not be configured correctly. Now you can contact that server's Webmaster for assistance.

Other Tips:

Beyond that, large PDF files can also cause problems. If the size of the PDF is bigger than 4MB, it may cause time out during downloading the PDF file. For more information on the problems of using PDF, you can refer to the Acrobat Online Guide. If you are badly in need of this PDF file, you can try a quick fix - Convert PDF to Word to make the PDF documents searchable and editable. Just free download the PDF to Word Converter here:

download for windowsdownload for mac

Related Links:

How to Convert PDF to Picture Format

How to Edit Scanned PDF Documents

How to Make A PDF File