Cant open downloaded PDF's

AppleHead62 wrote:

Hello Everyone This is my first Post

I have a macBook air with adobe installed, now adobe won't open pdf's until i upgrade, how can i get Preview to work? must i uninstall adobe first, if so will i lose all the documents adobe has opened?

Not all PDF's are the same, and may be beyond your control—esp. who authored the pdf, the software that created it, special permissions, etc..

The best you can do if one app refuses to open the PDF, is try a different software. True pdf editors, have more options and abilities—which you should have in your arsenal of applications.

To name a few:

Adobe Acrobat Reader

PDFpen

pdfExpert

etc.

Preview.app is not consider a true pdf editor.

Preview User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Right-click (or Control-click) on the .pdf file to get a set of options for that file. I don't have access to a Mac at the moment, but usually there should be an option for the "Preview" app or "Open As ...." where you can manually select the app you want to use to open a particular file.

Welcome and thanks for posting. Normally, all you have to do to open any PDF file is to double click on it. It then will open in Apple's Preview or Adobe's Acrobat Reader DC if you have it installed. There is no conflict between the two programs, but if both are installed, I believe that the Adobe app will be the primary one to open the file. I'm sure that can be changed in Preferences, but I would leave it as is since the Adobe app is more full featured. Last, you may want to visit the Adobe site to ensure that you have the latest compatible version downloaded. I hope this is helpful.

leroydouglas makes a good point. If you are merely wishing to open a PDF, then what has been said will do so. If what you are wanting to do is to open and then edit a PDF (you haven't told us this is the case) then you definitely need a PFD editor as he says. All that I know of are not free apps and will have varying costs.

That said, if the file you are looking at appears to be a text file, then you may be able to first open Microsoft word, then use its open file command to select the PDF. When it opens in Word, you can edit it and then save the revised document as a new PDF file.

You can highlight a pdf on your mac—command i will open the Information Pane. Here you can choose the default application to open all PDF.

Change All

Control-click is the macOS equivalent of a right-click. Preview is not a .pdf editor. See the suggestions made by @leroydouglas.