Rrettke

Q: iBooks 1.5 (El Cap 10.11.4) only opens PDF's in Preview.

In all previous versions of iBooks, it honored the system setting for what App to use to open a PDF. On my system that is Adobe Acrobat. iBooks 1.5 does not honor that system setting an always open PDF's in preview.

 

Does anyone know how to get iBooks to honor the system setting?

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11), 32GB

Posted on Mar 24, 2016 9:59 PM

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Q: iBooks 1.5 (El Cap 10.11.4) only opens PDF's in Preview.

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Gene Surber,

    Gene Surber Gene Surber Mar 25, 2016 11:50 AM in response to Rrettke
    Level 2 (239 points)
    Mar 25, 2016 11:50 AM in response to Rrettke

    You might try selecting a pdf file in the finder. Control + Click to see the menu and get info on the file. You should see under the comments box area "open with."  Preview is probably designated as the default app to open that kind of file. Choose from the menu beneath it what app you want to use to open the file. Once you have selected Adobe Acrobat, click on "change all." This should then associate all your pdf files with that app.

  • by Rrettke,

    Rrettke Rrettke Mar 25, 2016 11:56 AM in response to Gene Surber
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 25, 2016 11:56 AM in response to Gene Surber

    When a use the term system default that is exactly what I am referring to. All PDF's are set to use Adobe Acrobat (in the manner you described) but iBooks 1.5 ignores that setting.

  • by Rrettke,Apple recommended

    Rrettke Rrettke Mar 25, 2016 10:09 PM in response to Rrettke
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 25, 2016 10:09 PM in response to Rrettke

    Ok, I figured out the problem. If you turn on the iBooks.app in the iCloud Drive Preference in iCloud Preferences (or you respond positively to the prompt the first time you use iBooks 1.5 as to whether it should use iCloud Drive), what happens is that all the PDF files that were in iBooks on the Mac are moved to iCloud Drive -AND- the default app to open those PDF's (in get info) is changed from whatever it was set at to iBooks 1.5 (which is effectively like setting it to Preview). Those PDF's now live in the Cloud and although it is possible to locate them and do a get info on them, any attempt to change the default app fails, it cannot be changed from iBooks 1.5.

     

    So the solution for me was to turn off iCloud Drive for iBooks.

     

    But if you do that you will lose access to those PDF's in the cloud and they will not automatically be put back on your Mac. So before I turned off iCloud Drive for iBooks I copied all the PDF's from iCloud while I could still access them. The easiest way to do that is to just drag them from each collection in iBooks to a folder on the Mac. Then you can add them back from the folder into iBooks after you turn off iCloud Drive for iBooks.

     

    Kapisch

  • by jefromcamo,

    jefromcamo jefromcamo Jun 20, 2016 8:58 AM in response to Rrettke
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 20, 2016 8:58 AM in response to Rrettke

    Is there a way to downgrade to a previous version of the iBooks? iBooks not allowing me to edit PDF really bothers me.

  • by solomani,

    solomani solomani Jun 20, 2016 6:30 PM in response to Rrettke
    Level 1 (32 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 20, 2016 6:30 PM in response to Rrettke

    How annoying.  Can we get this permanently fixed so iCloud respects the OSX settings when used from a desktop?