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Pdf viewer in web browser

Hi: I used to be able to view pdf files in Chrome's native pdf viewer. Suddenly, I am no longer able to view files through Chrome's viewer, but only through what looks to be some new dropbox proprietary viewer. I'd like to be able to go back to the Chrome viewer, as the dropbox viewer has cut pdf functionality significantly.

How can I go back to viewing my pdf files on Chrome's native pdf viewer? Thank you.

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jaidgossamer

Hi all:

I finally found a solution that might not be ideal for everyone, but actually solves the problems listed above . . . I've been having issues using the Dropbox viewer to view my pdfs, have not been able to view any larger pdfs, and one other poster mentioned that he was having some difficulty sharing his pdfs with others.

I've been asking for a fix that would allow us to completely bypass the Dropbox viewer so that we can view our pdfs in Chrome's native viewer. Some of the techs were lovely and brilliant enough to come up with the fix that involves "printing" the pdf (and then canceling out of the print dialog box), which allows you to then see the pdf in Chrome viewer. Unfortunately, though, this did not solve the issue of not being able to open larger pdfs - if the pdf couldn't be open in Dropbox viewer, then trying to "print" the pdf does not work, and you also will not be able to view the pdf in Chrome.

The one solution that I have been using that satisfies all the above issues is to abandon Dropbox and use Google Drive to store and share my pdfs. I've been able to open and view ALL pdfs in Google Drive (even 6,000 page legal tomes!!!) without any issue, and GD also allows us to connect all sorts of third party apps so that we can view our pdfs in the third-party viewer of our choosing. I've also had a much easier time sharing these pdfs with my colleagues on GD . . . Dropbox sharing was easy so long as the receiving party also had a Dropbox account.

This has really been a god-send as I work with people all over the country, and these people often access these work documents via Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android platforms . . . Google Drive has allowed us the straight-forward ability to download items directly onto the desktop/Google Drive app without having to hunt for the proper methodology for doing so.

So, while I absolutely love Dropbox, I really don't want to have to add several extra key strokes to get things done, or spend time figuring out how to do the simplest things, or have massive changes made to a system that not only wasn't broken in the first place, but also wasn't wanted, warranted, or needed, while ultimately taking away functionality. I work 12 to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I can't afford to have my workflow disrupted so severely every other month when some random new change is rolled out.

So, those looking for maximum functionality when using, storing, and sharing pdfs should consider doing so via Google Drive.

Roger F.8

I am customer for years, could you guys please just give us the ability to open pdf with the native chrome viewer? Dropbox PDF viewer is much worst and limited, while you guys don't have a PDF viewer as good as chrome, for example, dont obligate your paying customers to use this. It is like we are paying Dropbox to make the service worst everyday, dont "fix" what wasn't broken to begin with.

All comments

Jane

Hey @jaidgossamer,

Thank you for getting in touch with us on our Community support channel!

Please note that, because of the Dropbox and Adobe integration, disabling file preview on the Dropbox website is not available, though, if you would like to view the files in their original quality, you can always download them to your device.

Hope this helps you clarify!

Kind regards,

JaneA

jaidgossamer

Thanks for your reply, however to clarify - I was able to view my pdfs in native Chrome pdf browser yesterday. Today the functionality has changed. I would like to return to former functionality. Thanks,

Delirion

Hi JaneA

until 15 of March we were able to force to open pdfs straight in the browser by adding raw=1 to our shared links.

We have been using this feature heavily and now have to got back and fix all the links as DB broke them without any heads up or explanation what so ever.

Your response is in so far not helping as it only states what we already experience with no further background on what happend.

Its a reoccuring feeling dropbox makes changes on their end but missses to provide any information at all.

As a long time Pro and Dropbox Busines, or Team (or whatever its going to be called in the next few weeks) User I'm wondering which feature might go away in the future without any warning.

Looking forward to a more in depth explanation why the adobe integration into dropbox makes the handling of pdfs worse then before.

Jane

Hey @Delirion,

Thank you for letting me know here!

Please note that if you are a Dropbox Plus/ Dropbox for Business team, beginning September 1, 2017, you will no longer be able to render HTML content.

I appreciate your frustration, please let me go through a couple troubleshooting steps with you. Can you please attempt rendering those pdf files on an incognito window and let me know whether this helps here, so that I follow-up on this case?

Thank you in advance for your cooperation!

Kind regards,

JaneA

jaidgossamer

This problem was eventually solved by members of the dropbox support team. They emailed me a "hack" that allowed me to force open pdf documents in chrome's pdf viewer by pressing Shift+Ctrl+[file].

Oddly enough, full functionality returned to my dropbox account on Mar 22, which now allows me to open pdf documents in chrome's pdf viewer by pressingly only Ctrl+[file].

Since it was a little confusing, I'll re-describe the original problem . . . Prior to March 15, 2017, I was able to open pdf files in chrome's pdf viewer, as well as open documents by pressing Ctrl+[file]. (This was when I accessed my dropbox account through the chrome browser). Suddenly, I lost that functionality, was only able to open files one by one, and only in dropbox's proprietary viewer. This limited functionality of my dropbox account, since I could no longer open several files at once (without great effort). Additionally, the dropbox viewer DOES NOT open pdf files larger than 50mb (I've been able to open pdf files up to 200 mb in chrome's viewer without issue). Now, somehow, my dropbox functionality has fully returned.

So, if you are having the same problems I was - please try the Shift+Ctrl method of forcing open pdf files in chrome's viewer.

Thank you once again to the dropbox support team for all of their help in this matter!

Would you mind taking a minute of your time to fill out a survey sharing your experience using our Dropbox Community? You can access the survey here: http://bit.ly/2lNKIxT

Thank you!

SubAtomia

Dear Ed,

The issue is not how well we like the Community. The root cause of the problem is Dropbox operates differently on Chrome than it does on Safari. Essentially we have a loss of functionality with Chrome. And the question is what is Dropbox going to do about it? Or should we be prepared to lose functionality with Safari as well?

Michael R.54

What about if my students are accessing it from a public link remotely? How can they get it to force open on chrome? Any ideas? I am a teacher and I am sharing a PDF file that I make for their assignments. The file always has worked fine and opened. Now the hyperlinks on my PDF are not working with Dropbox's new priortity view.

For example, here my file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5p5be1tezxcyxm/avtf1%20assignment%20calendar%202017%2018.pdf?dl=0

My students access it by typing in a tinyurl....

tinyurl.com/321action

How can I get it to force open on Google without Dropbox view when they are accessing it remotly through a public link? ? Can you ask you dropbox tech guy that helped you for me please??? I cannot seem to get anybody to help me when I send in a support ticket.

Thank you and I will be forever grateful!!

Michael

jaidgossamer

I am seconding this . . . previously, I was able to preview pdf files in Chrome's native pdf viewer by clicking Shift + Ctrl + File. Now, the functionality has been removed. What happened?

The pdf viewer provided by Dropbox is NOT a welcome replacement, it is not as fast and efficient as the Chrome native viewer, and it is difficult to share with others. Please fix or find a way to allow users to switch back and forth between dropbox viewer and the native viewer!

jaidgossamer

Dropbox viewer is UNBELIEVABLY annoying as it cannot open any file larger than 200 MB . . . it has essentially taken away users' ability to fully access their files online. This is completely unacceptable, as I have 2 TB of pdf documentation, over 80% of which can now NOT be viewed.

jaidgossamer

I am posting this again because the forum does not seem to have a function that allows us to change status of the answer from "solved" to "unsolved."

Previously, I was unable to view pdf files in Chrome's native pdf viewer. Suddenly I could only access pdf files through Dropbox's viewer. The problem is, the Dropbox viewer is SEVERELY limited in what it can do - and often times cannot even open the pdf file at all. After discussing with tech support, the issue was resolved and we were given a fix that allowed us to "force" the pdf file open in Chrome's native pdf viewer.

Now, the fix has been removed. We are back again to only being able to see pdf files in the Dropbox viewer. Now, I cannot access many of my pdf files. This is really unacceptable, as there didn't seem to be ANY problems with Chrome viewer, no one seemed to be complaining, and yet a change was made that severely limits the service. Some help getting functionality back to our dropbox accounts would be much appreciated, thank you.

Sanchez

Hi @jaidgossamer,

So, previously, you we unable or able to view PDFs in Chrome? Did, does it work in other browsers?

Was it our support team that provided the fix for this, and do you know what the fix was?

How are you opening these PDFs? Directly from your files list in your online account, or by following links to the PDF files?

Any additional details you can provide, will be helpful in troubleshooting this with you.

Thanks, and have a great weekend

jaidgossamer

Hi:

Thanks for your reply . . .

Previously, I was able to open pdf files (all of them) by selecting the file and pressing Ctrl + [file]. I was able to view pdfs in Chrome's native pdf viewer. The problem arose when I could suddenly ONLY open the pdf files in the dropbox pdf viewer. The dropbox pdf viewer is unwanted in this instance - because a great deal of pdf functionality is LOST (including being able to open larger pdf files and the loss of the ability to easily share the files).

I lost functionality when suddenly I was not able to do that any longer. After discussing with tech support for over 72 hours, they supplied me with a fix that allowed for opening pdf files in the native Chrome pdf viewer by pressing Shift + Ctrl + [file].

Now, a few months later, apparently, the fix no longer works.

I would like to be able to view pdfs in the Chrome native pdf viewer, NOT the dropbox viewer.

The original thread can be found here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Sharing-and-collaboration/Pdf-viewer-in-web-browser/m-p/237488#M16322

Thank you,

Sanchez

@jaidgossamer,

Thanks for detailing the issue. I’m sorry that I don’t have an answer for you, and all I can do here is to send this over to our web guys so they’re aware.

Cheers

jaidgossamer

No worries, Sanchez, THANK YOU for forwarding the information . . . at this point in time I couldn't figure out how to contact Dropbox tech support, so I sincerely appreciate your doing so . . . Fingers crossed as to a solution!

Thank you again,

apraetor

What happens if you use the "Open" option on the PDFs instead? That should cause them to open with your computer's registered PDF handler, instead of Dropbox's viewer.

By going to Settings (on Windows 10) and setting my default PDF viewer for Windows to Chrome, and then using "Open" on dropbox.com, I was able to get my PDF files to open natively in Chrome. If you tell me your OS I can give you specific instructions. My original default PDF handler was Adobe DC, and it opened them fine, too. But I tested Chrome to confirm for you that it's possible to use it as you wish.

Sanchez

Hey @apraetor,

Thanks for posting your suggestion. I can confirm that it works on Windows 10! Not the ideal solution for all our friends here, but a nice work-around indeed

Cheers

jaidgossamer

Unfortunately, doesn't work on Mac OS X. Selecting "Open" merely opens it in Adobe Acrobat.

apraetor

Actually, it DOES work on OS X, but you need to change the PDF handler from Adobe to Google Chrome. Follow these instructions. Or, do this (same thing):

Find a PDF file in Finder
Right-click (control+click) the PDF
Select "Get Info"
Under the "Opens With" section select "Google Chrome"
Click "Change All..."
Enjoy!

jaidgossamer

Thanks so much for this information . . .

The problem here, of course, is that you are asking people to change their global pdf viewer so that ALL pdfs open in Chrome . . . and this is only to solve a problem created by Dropbox alone.

I currently have a 2TB account with Dropbox, 70% of which are pdf files . . . so, i use a lot of pdfs and I use them often. I would like to be able to access my pdf files (many of which are large files, as well as forms) from other computers (using public computers, etc) . . . as a supposed "cloud-based" solution, making global systemic changes is untenable and not something that Dropbox should be asking people to do.

I don't have this problem in iOS because I've abandoned using the Dropbox app altogether, and instead access my dropbox account directly through Acrobat's app . . .

apraetor

@jaidgossamer I assumed that since Google Chrome was your preferred PDF viewer you would want to use it globally. Your last post said that my work-around "doesn't work in Mac OS X", which is untrue. It didn't include details of your use-case.

jaidgossamer

Thank you for your help in this matter,

Best,

apraetor

@jaidgossamer Anytime!

You mentioned that sometimes you receive an error when PDF previews aren't displayed. If it's the "too big to preview" message then you might want to try Adobe's PDF Optimizer, as there's an 80 mb file size limit for Dropbox's preview.

You might also try printing one of your troublesome PDFs on your Mac and choosing "save as PDF"; the reprinting process sometimes fixes situations where non-standard layers in a PDF are causing issues for some PDF handlers (it can also shrink massive PDFs which contain many high-quality layers that weren't sufficiently down-sampled on export). It might be worth finding out if that resolves the issue, as it'll give Dropbox a clue as to where the problem lies. If that fixes the problem then you could use Automator in OS X to automate the process of reprinting them all. Less than ideal work-around, but might get you back to your ideal workflow.

Good luck!

jaidgossamer

Thanks again for your help . . .

I won't be able to optimize these pdfs as much as I would like as they are mostly 3000+ page legal tomes.

Yes, I'm pretty irritated by Dropbox's 80MB limit . . . Chrome's native pdf viewer has no such limit. I'm pretty sure I can go ahead and take my 15,000+ documents and work towards printing and optimizing each one, and Dropbox would most certainly appreciate the years of effort I put into doing so,

Ultimately, I have been using Chrome's native pdf viewer without issue at all . . . Even the Acrobat app on iOS gives me no issue with very large pdfs.

It would be awesome if I could simply open my pdfs in Chrome's native pdf viewer. Again, this used to be allowed in my Dropbox account, and when they took away this functionality on March 15, 2016, they inserted a fix that allowed us to force open the pdfs in the native viewer. Now, for some reason, they have removed this fix.

So once again, thanks so much for your help, I am hoping that Dropbox finds (or makes) a way that will allow us to bypass their viewer.

Best,

Hi @jaidgossamer

Completely unrelated but somehow related

You asked about the option to 'unmark' a post that was marked as a solution. You can do that (as long as you're the original poster (OP) or the author of the solution) by clicking on the ". . ." menu on the right of the post that was marked as a solution.

Just click on it and then select 'Not the Solution' :

Screenshot 2017-08-28 10.47.35.png

Thanks!

apraetor

Years? Nah. Given a simple workflow of "open PDF, print PDF" Automator can do thousands of PDFs an hour.

But it sounds like your issue isn't that the PDFs don't open in Dropbox's web UI, but that you want their web UI to use Chrome's renderer, which adds an attack point which Dropbox cannot control or patch. Dropbox likely prefers their own viewer because it is under their control.

I would suggest you click "Download" instead. Whether the file is being downloaded to open in Chrome, or downloaded to be previewed in Dropbox's viewer, either way it has to download to the local machine before you can see it. When the Downloads bar appears in the bottom of Chrome you can click the file and it will open in the Chrome PDF handler.

jaidgossamer

@Ed! Thank you so much for this! This was so helpful!

Jane

Hey @apraetor,

Thanks for posting this workaround here, much appreciated!

Let me just briefly rephrase that, should someone want to preview a pdf file in Chrome, they could use the “Print” option while previewing the document on their Dropbox account, as below:

Once redirected to a new browsing window, they’d have to “Cancel” the printing (this option can be found under “Google print”, if someone uses Chrome). This will allow you to preview your .pdf doc in Chrome.

Hope this helps as a second workaround!

Warm regards,

Jane

jaidgossamer

Hi Jane:

Thank you, this really works, and is totally awesome!

The steps to do this are:

(1) Click Ctrl + [file] - (or Cmd + [file] - to open the pdf in a new tab.

(2) In the dropbox viewer, go to the menu that appears in the bottom center of the page to select the "print" icon.

(3) After selecting this icon, the pdf will open in yet another page, with the print document menu overlay. Just select "Cancel" to get rid of the overlay.

Just as a note, you must select the "print" icon in the bottom center of the page while in Dropbox viewer. If you click Ctrl+P, then it will take you through a different print process.

Also, this fix only works for those pdf documents that can be seen in Dropbox preview . . . so if the file is too large, it cannot be seen in Dropbox preview, and it cannot be seen after applying this fix.

This fix also only works for Chrome . . . I have not been able to get it to work on Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chromium, or the Tor Browser.

Thank you once again, Jane, this was amazingly helpful!

Best,

jaidgossamer

Thank you so much for this fix, Jane, it worked really well!

Here are the steps:

(1) Select file to open in new tab (press Ctrl + file or Cmd + file).

(2) You are now in Dropbox viewer, so navigate to the bottom center of the page and press the "Print" icon.

(3) You will be taken to yet another new tab, with a print dialog box overlay. Simply press "Cancel" to get out of the print dialog box overlay and you will now be in Chrome's native pdf viewer.

Note that you can only press the "Print" icon in the bottom center of the page . . . pressing Ctrl + P will take you through a completely different print process.

Please also note that this fix will only allow you to see those pdfs that can already be viewed in Dropbox viewer. If the pdf is too large to be viewed in Dropbox viewer, then it also cannot be viewed using this fix.

Also note that this fix only works in Chrome - I have confirmed that it does not work in Firefox, Safari, Chromium, Opera, or the Tor Browser.

Once again, thanks so much for all of your help with this, Jane, it was really helpful!