Help with Viewer not displaying PDFs in embedded IE11

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jchd
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Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:53 pm

Help with Viewer not displaying PDFs in embedded IE11

Post by jchd »

Hello Tracker,

My work relies on heavy use of a proprietary software to access technical documents (BMP & PDF). They are displayed in an embedded IE11 control (no choice here) from where I can choose to save them for further use.
For years I used PDF-Xchange Viewer (latest release) which proved fast and feature-rich enough for almost all my needs.
I run Win10 21H1.

So all went well until I had the foolish idea to try PDF-Xchange Editor instead (latest release). It installed fine but it proved very hard to use in my context, compared to the previous old version. Not that Editor is a bad product: it's just not a good fit for this precise context. I'm well aware that Viewer is obsolete but I'd like to keep it working as it was previously.

I decided to uninstall Edit and make Viewer my default .pdf viewer again. And this is where things turned bad. Now the embedded IE11 control doesn't display files again. PDFs display fine in browsers, even IE if I try to launch it, as soon as the browser is launched "normally".

In the registry, the mime type for application/pdf points to CLSID {C5D07EB6-BBCE-4DAE-ACBB-D13A8D28CB1F} which looks like the correct setting for Viewer. I had to set it myself but to no avail.

What can you suggest? Which additional information do you need?
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Paul - Tracker Supp
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Re: Help with Viewer not displaying PDFs in embedded IE11

Post by Paul - Tracker Supp »

Hi JCHD,

I am keen to hear what about the Editor makes it not a good fit. Maybe we can improve that. It would be better to get the Editor working how you want because it is being actively developed where as the Viewer is not going to see any further development. I am keen to better understand what I can do to make the Editor be what you want to use.

Having said that, try the following:

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/pdf]
@="PDFXCviewIEPlugin.CoPDFXCviewIEPlugin.1"
"CLSID"="{C5D07EB6-BBCE-4DAE-ACBB-D13A8D28CB1F}"
"Extension"=".pdf"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\MIMEAssociations\application/pdf\UserChoice]
"Progid"="PDFXCviewIEPlugin.CoPDFXCviewIEPlugin.1"
Tested here and does spawn the Viewer within IE. You should see the same.

cheers
Best regards

Paul O'Rorke
Tracker Support North America
http://www.tracker-software.com
jchd
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Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:53 pm

Re: Help with Viewer not displaying PDFs in embedded IE11

Post by jchd »

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your quick answer. Applying these changes to the registry fixed the issue with Viewer.

About Editor, while I agree that it's a much better and more complete solution, it randomly hangs in this very precise context. That is, I can display and download one or more documents, but at times the software just hangs and displays an hourglass forever (I mean the round dancing dots).
I can't sort whether it's this (crappy?) software or Editor which is causing the hang, and I suspect there can be a more or less random glitch in the interface between both. Not being in the position to dissect the software and without much support from the vendor, I bet the best solution for me is to keep using Viewer.

OTOH, Editor is pretty good when used standalone and I'm going to try it in other use cases.

Again thank you very much for your support.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Help with Viewer not displaying PDFs in embedded IE11

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

:)
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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