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Resolved Question

Safari and pdf files?

Jun 29, 2012 11:27PM PDT

Hi everyone,

Is there a way to have Safari display a pdf file whose link is shown on a page? I'm running Safari 5.1.7 under Snow Leopard.

Sometimes you can work around this problem by ctrl-clicking on the pdf link and downloading the file (to your Desktop say), but often times the link is to an .html page and not directly to the pdf file.

Thanks for any pointers.

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mariohummer has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Safari is able to do that.
Jun 30, 2012 12:10AM PDT

clicking on a link to a pdf in a web page viewed with Safari, loads the PDF file, in a new page, inside Safari. At least it does on my version of Safari. (5.1.7 under Lion)

What is your default PDF viewer? I have found that having Acrobat Reader, and its associated plugins installed, causes a problem with PDF file viewing in Safari.

If Reader is installed, go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and remove any Adobe plug-ins by dragging them to the desktop. (This is the Library that is at the root of the hard drive and NOT the Library in your User(Home) folder.)

Restart Safari and see if it made any difference.

Moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen while viewing a PDF in Safari should bring up a small menubar with Print, Save and a couple more options

P

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Moving the Adobe plugins really did the trick
Jul 1, 2012 7:49AM PDT

Mrmacfixit,

Many thanks for your help.

You were right on the money; (re)moving the two Adobe PDF Viewer plugins from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and restarting Safari indeed worked. Appreciated!

My Safari now opens the pdf file in a new window (as I believe it once did in the past, but the installation of those plugins somehow disables that feature.

I have double-checked and Chrome and Firefox are also working the same way as Safari now is. Fantastic!

Thank you.

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(NT) glad it worked for you
Jul 1, 2012 9:45PM PDT