One of my clients has reported an issue that they are
facing some problems while opening PDF files. Further probing reflected the
fact that PDF files are opening but they are getting the prompt of Open, Save
and Cancel. In contradictory, the actual requirement is PDF files has to open
in browser mode directly rather than saving it to the desktop.
Problem
description: SharePoint 2010 prompts to save PDF
documents when opening.
Now the question is: Is there a way to
open a PDF in a web browser, just like Office Web Apps?
This problem is quite annoying as every time we need to
save the documents to the desktop!
Started my troubleshooting to explore the options in
central administration
Let
me tell you the fact why this is happening? In SharePoint 2010, browser handling
has been classified into 2 types:
1) Strict
2) Permissive
So
the next obvious question will be- what are the differences between these above
mentioned types? Here are the details:
Strict specifies the MIME types which are not listed in a Web
Application’s AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes property (more on this in a bit)
are forced to be downloaded.
Permissive specifies that the HTML and other content types which
might contain script are allowed to be displayed directly in the browser. In
other words, no matter what the type of content, if it lives within SharePoint,
the file will open in your browser.
By
default, the option is strict in Central administration so that’s why getting
prompt is quite obvious.
Resolution#1 / now the
question is how to change this?
1) Open
the central administration
2) Application
management
3) Under
web applications- Manage web applications
4) Select
the web application for which you want to change the settings
5) General
Settings (Top-Ribbon section)
6) This
will be open web application general settings
7) There
is a section named as ‘Browser File Handling’
8) You
will see two radio buttons as Strict and Permissive
9) Change
it to Permissive and Click OK
No needs to do
any iisreset so please go ahead and check the results!
-You should be able to open the PDF files directly in
browser-
Resolution#2
–
Same functionality as Resolution1, only thing is by means of Power Shell:
$webApp = Get-SPWebApplication
http://webapplication_URL
$webApp.BrowserFileHandling =
"permissive"
$webApp.update()
If you have some security concerns and don’t want to change the
option from strict to permissive then here is the resolution:
By
means of Powershell:
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.SharePoint”)
$webapp =
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication]::Lookup(“http://web
application_URL”)
If ($webApp.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes -notcontains
“application/pdf”)
{
Write-Host -ForegroundColor White “Adding Pdf MIME Type…”
$webApp.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes.Add(“application/pdf”)
$webApp.Update()
Write-Host -ForegroundColor White “Added and saved.”
} Else {
Write-Host -ForegroundColor White “Pdf MIME type is already
added.”
}
Now
your PDF documents will be displayed in the browser even if Browser File Handling
is set to Strict.
One
last point, in fact important point is you may face the problem with the list
or site templates. How? – We are all aware that site as well as list/libraries
can be saved as templates to transfer from one location to another.
I
would like to thanks to Nico Martens
for publishing this article for all of us:
Thank
you.
If
you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then
please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves
your issues.
Happy
SharePoint to all of you…
Product Applies to:
1) SharePoint Server
2010
2) SharePoint
Foundation 2010
References:
Open
PDF files in the browser from SharePoint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULfIEmoq-F0
