greg_al

Q: Preview not opening PDFs in El Capitan

Hello everyone,

 

I just updated my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) to OS X El Capitan (10.11) and Preview stopped working with PDFs. It works well with images (JPEGs, EPSs, PNGs, etc.) but it is unable to open PDFs anymore.

 

I found this was happening because I opened a PDF and it called Safari instead of Preview. I changed the default app for PDFs back to Preview but it did not work. What's strange is that, even when I changed the default app to Preview, the icons for PDF refer to Safari...

 

Anybody else facing the same issue?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 11, 2015 2:41 PM

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Q: Preview not opening PDFs in El Capitan

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  • by els1,

    els1 els1 Dec 19, 2015 9:47 AM in response to greg_al
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 19, 2015 9:47 AM in response to greg_al

    original post

    I tried 30 or so additional PDFs created from different sources, by different apps and at different time periods--all opened in Preview. Ever since I opened just one PDF in Acrobat that wouldn't open in Preview this has been true. Same is true for images. I can't make sense of this happy outcome but so far so good. Will report any further testing.

     

    One other thing--when I first noticed the problem I changed all PDFs (using Get Info) to open in Acrobat and later changed them all back to open in Preview--maybe that was part of the success.

  • by Harleylowspeed,

    Harleylowspeed Harleylowspeed Dec 19, 2015 12:30 PM in response to els1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 19, 2015 12:30 PM in response to els1

    Did you apply the latest update per chance?  That has seemed to solve the issue for me.

  • by Christopher Vigil1,

    Christopher Vigil1 Christopher Vigil1 Dec 19, 2015 5:00 PM in response to Harleylowspeed
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 19, 2015 5:00 PM in response to Harleylowspeed

    This issue has not reoccured since the latest update.

  • by Christopher Vigil1,

    Christopher Vigil1 Christopher Vigil1 Dec 19, 2015 5:04 PM in response to B.Carlin
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 19, 2015 5:04 PM in response to B.Carlin

    The issue I was having was that preview was irregularly not displaying random pdfs.   Restating was temporally fixing this,  but the latest update appeared to have resolved this issue for me.

  • by els1,

    els1 els1 Dec 25, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Harleylowspeed
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 25, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Harleylowspeed

    Yes on update: 10..11.2, MBP late 2013. Just discovered that of the set of 10 guides downloaded for a Brother printer (all from the same site) some open in Preview and some don't and of the ones that open if edited (e.g. highlighting, lines, etc.) the changes cannot be saved:

     

    "The document “doc-name” could not be saved as “different-doc-name”. You don’t have permission.

    To view or change permissions, select the item in the Finder and choose File > Get Info. You can also duplicate the document or discard your changes to close it."


    File permissions are RW for me. A similar message appears for both saving as the same file name or saving as a copy. Acrobat Reader works for all PDFs.


    Will write to apple.com/feedback and hope Apple pays attention soon.

  • by els1,

    els1 els1 Dec 25, 2015 10:28 AM in response to Harleylowspeed
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 25, 2015 10:28 AM in response to Harleylowspeed

    Disk Utility showed some problems ("incorrect number of file hard links" and "HD found corrupt") so did a repair after rebooting into Recovery Mode. So far so good. After testing a couple of PDFs that didn't open before because of permission errors they now didn't open because they were created by unblessed software--File->Open works where clicking on the file icon did not. Some in this batch of files (batch of 10 Brother manuals from the same source) do open when clicking on the icon. Who knows why the difference. Files can also now be saved.

     

    So, all's well so far.

  • by mortenldk,

    mortenldk mortenldk Jan 5, 2016 12:11 PM in response to greg_al
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 5, 2016 12:11 PM in response to greg_al

    I had the exact same problem. This solved it:

     

    Re: Why won't preview open pdf files anymore?

  • by nableibtrey,

    nableibtrey nableibtrey Jan 6, 2016 8:03 PM in response to greg_al
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 6, 2016 8:03 PM in response to greg_al

    Same problem here. Upgrading to El Capitan seems to have been a horrible mistake. Why haven't they fixed this issue yet?

  • by william458,

    william458 william458 Jan 22, 2016 9:27 AM in response to mortenldk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 22, 2016 9:27 AM in response to mortenldk

    This solved it! Thank you so much!

  • by nmt999,

    nmt999 nmt999 Jan 26, 2016 2:55 PM in response to AEROJOHN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2016 2:55 PM in response to AEROJOHN

    Hi. I had the same problem in El Capitan. I fixed it by creating a new user account and moving all the important files to my new profile. Preview started to work again. I found out that "Disk Permissions" was damaged in Finder, so it messed up something in Preview. Anyway, I hope this helps.

  • by industry,

    industry industry Mar 7, 2016 10:23 AM in response to mortenldk
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mar 7, 2016 10:23 AM in response to mortenldk

    Thanks for the link.  It solved my problem with Preview also

  • by amankaya,

    amankaya amankaya May 12, 2016 5:09 AM in response to mortenldk
    Level 1 (6 points)
    May 12, 2016 5:09 AM in response to mortenldk

    thank you ! the link in the other thread solved my problem

  • by lmcnl54,

    lmcnl54 lmcnl54 Jul 23, 2016 10:42 AM in response to greg_al
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 23, 2016 10:42 AM in response to greg_al

    I ran the Preview Reset app suggested in one of the posts and everything was clean, good to go, but it didn't fix the issue.  Found another thread "Make "Preview" default pdf reader" that suggested resetting Preview as the default viewer (comment from user "Limnos")- and it worked like a charm!

  • by rockhound66,

    rockhound66 rockhound66 Aug 31, 2016 4:35 AM in response to greg_al
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 31, 2016 4:35 AM in response to greg_al

    I had a similar issue yesterday. Preview would not open PDFs but would open photos etc. I used Onyx (free download from Titanium software). I told it to rebuild the Launch Services database and it fixed the issue. PDFs opening like a charm now.

  • by MacTyler,

    MacTyler MacTyler Sep 30, 2016 9:13 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2016 9:13 AM in response to Linc Davis

    This worked for me...Thank you!

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