Any advice on cleaning up of .pdf files left in %temp%?

[BrianG]

Hi All,

Is there a way for .pdf files accessed with a browser to be auto-deleted from %temp% once closed? I routinely view sensitive reports generated as pdf's on 401k and payroll sites and am disturbed by these documents remaining in the system temporary directory after I'm done with them.

Brian

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello BrianG,

If you are directly viewing these file in the browser, or using the Download/open function provided in your browser, this would be something that your browser needs to handle. Most of the time, if browsing directly in the browse, it will be held in a locked folder which only the application in question (your browser, and its plugins) can open. Many browsers will clear these out automatically or have an option to do so, when the application is closed. If you wish to do this manually, the best advice I can offer is to keep an eye on where the files in questions appear, and delete them manually when they are no longer needed.

Does this help?

[BrianG]

It has been years since I have used the 'view pdf in browser' method but it's probably time to revisit it and look at the functionality today. Firefox is my default with Edge as my fallback.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Brian,

If those files left in your %TEMP% folder are remnants of what a browser did - then I am afraid you will have to check it's settings and only there, as all modern browsers no longer allow third party plug-ins like ours - so all PDF viewing in browsers is done via their own code, and they are the ones responsible for sanitizing the %TEMP% folder when closing.

Regards,
Stefan

[BrianG]

It didn't take long for me to determine that viewing pdf's in a browser isn't practical for my needs. Looks like a cron job is needed that deletes .pdf files from %TEMP%. Even better would be for it to be built in to a PDF-XChange Editor as an optional security function that would run on exit and/or on demand.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, BrianG

I am afraid that it is highly unlikely we will ever implement a function to "automatically delete" anything as far too many issues could arise from its existence. Deleted files are difficult to recover in many cases, and we would be unable to assist in recovering them.

Even if we were to offer this, it would likely not effect on the files in your temp folder, as in almost all cases browsers download files to be opened locally (by our software) into your "downloads" folder (or as manually specified by you), not the temp folder. the only files we would be aware of are the ones that we open.

Kind regards,