PDF files do not open in Internet Explorer with Adobe Reader 10 0 - users get an empty gray screen How can I fix this for my users

Question

There is a known issue with opening a PDF in Internet Explorer  v 6  7  8  9  with Adobe Reader X  version 10 0      The browser window loads with an empty gray screen  and doesn t even have a Reader toolbar    It works perfectly fine with Firefox  Chrome  or with Adobe Reader 10 1     I have discovered several workarounds   For example  hitting  Refresh  will load the document properly   Upgrading to Adobe Reader 10 1    or downgrading to 9    fixes the issue too  However  all of these solutions require the user to figure it out   Most of my users get very confused at seeing this gray screen  and end up blaming the PDF file and blaming the website for being broken   Honestly  until I researched the issue  I blamed the PDF too   So  I am trying to figure out a way to fix this issue for my users  I ve considered providing a  Download PDF  link  that sets the Content-Disposition header to attachment instead of inline   but my company does not like that solution at all  because we really want these PDF files to display in the browser     Has anyone else experienced this issue   What are some possible solutions or workarounds   I m really hoping for a solution that is seamless to the end-user  because I can t rely on them to know how to change their Adobe Reader settings  or to automatically install updates   Here s the dreaded Gray Screen  Edit  screenshot was deleted from file server   Sorry  The image was a browser window  with the regular toolbar  but a solid gray background  no UI whatsoever   Background info  Although I don t think the following information is related to my issue  I ll include it for reference  This is an ASP NET MVC application  and has jQuery available  The link to the PDF file has target  blank so that it opens in a new window  The PDF file is being generated on-the-fly  and all the content headers are being set appropriately   The URL does NOT include the  pdf extension  but we do set the content-disposition header with a valid  pdf filename and the inline setting     Edit  Here is the source code that I m using to serve up the PDF files     First  the Controller Action   public ActionResult ComplianceCertificate int id       byte   pdfBytes   ComplianceBusiness GetCertificate id       return new PdfResult pdfBytes  false   Compliance Certificate  0  pdf   id       And here is the ActionResult  PdfResult  inherits System Web Mvc FileContentResult    using System Net Mime  using System Web Mvc       lt summary gt      Returns the proper Response Headers and  Content-Disposition  for a PDF file      and allows you to specify the filename and whether it will be downloaded by the browser       lt  summary gt  public class PdfResult   FileContentResult       public ContentDisposition ContentDisposition   get  private set              lt summary gt          Returns a PDF FileResult           lt  summary gt           lt param name  pdfFileContents  gt The data for the PDF file lt  param gt           lt param name  download  gt Determines if the file should be shown in the browser or downloaded as a file lt  param gt           lt param name  filename  gt The filename that will be shown if the file is downloaded or saved  lt  param gt           lt param name  filenameArgs  gt A list of arguments to be formatted into the filename  lt  param gt           lt returns gt  lt  returns gt       JetBrains Annotations StringFormatMethod  filename        public PdfResult byte   pdfFileContents  bool download  string filename  params object   filenameArgs             base pdfFileContents   application pdf                    Format the filename          if  filenameArgs    null  amp  amp  filenameArgs Length  gt  0                        filename   string Format filename  filenameArgs                         Add the filename to the Content-Disposition         ContentDisposition   new ContentDisposition                                                                         Inline    download                                       FileName   filename                                       Size   pdfFileContents Length                                                 protected override void WriteFile System Web HttpResponseBase response                   Add the filename to the Content-Disposition         response AddHeader  Content-Disposition   ContentDisposition ToString             base WriteFile response

User · Answer

For Win7  Acrobat Pro X  Since I did all these without rechecking to see if the problem still existed afterwards  I am not sure which on of these actually fixed the problem  but one of them did  In fact  after doing the  3 and rebooting  it worked perfectly    FYI  Below is the order in which I stepped through the repair     Go to Control Panel   folders options under each of the General  View and Search Tabs click the Restore Defaults button and the Reset Folders button  Go to Internet Explorer  Tools   Options   Advanced   Reset   I did not need to delete personal settings  Open Acrobat Pro X  under Edit   Preferences   General  At the bottom of page select Default PDF Handler  I chose Adobe Pro X  and click Apply     You may be asked to reboot  I did     Best Wishes

User · Answer

Experimenting more  the underlying cause in my app  calling goog userAgent adobeReader  was accessing Adobe Reader via an ActiveXObject on the page with the link to the PDF  This minimal test case causes the gray screen for me  however removing the ActiveXObject causes no gray screen     lt  DOCTYPE html gt   lt html lang  en  gt     lt head gt       lt title gt hi lt  title gt       lt meta charset  utf-8  gt     lt  head gt     lt body gt       lt script gt        new ActiveXObject  AcroPDF PDF 1         lt  script gt       lt a target   blank  href  http   partners adobe com public developer en xml AdobeXMLFormsSamples pdf  gt link lt  a gt     lt  body gt   lt  html gt    I m very interested if others are able to reproduce the problem with this test case and following the steps from my other post   I don t have an exact solution      on a  slow  computer   Sorry for posting a new answer  but I couldn t figure out how to add a code block in a comment on my previous post   For a video example of this minimal test case  see  http   youtu be IgEcxzM6Kck

User · Answer

In my case the solution was quite simple  I added this header and the browsers opened the file in every test  header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename  filename pdf

User · Answer

It s been 4 months since asking this question  and I still haven t found a good solution  However  I did find a decent workaround  which I will share in case others have the same issue  I will try to update this answer  too  if I make further progress   First of all  my research has shown that there are several possible combinations of user-settings and site settings that cause a variety of PDF display issues   These include    Broken version of Adobe Reader  10 0    HTTPS site with Internet Explorer and the default setting  Don t save encrypted files to disk  Adobe Reader setting - disable  Display PDF files in my browser  Slow hardware  thanks  ahochhaus    I spent some time researching PDF display options at pdfobject com  which is an EXCELLENT resource and I learned a lot     The workaround I came up with is to embed the PDF file inside an empty HTML page   It is very simple   See some similar examples at pdfobject com    lt html gt       lt head gt     lt  head gt       lt body gt           lt object data   pdf sample pdf  type  application pdf  height  100   width  100   gt  lt  object gt       lt  body gt   lt  html gt    However  here s a list of caveats    This ignores all user-preferences for PDFs - for example  I personally like PDFs to open in a stand-alone Adobe Reader  but that is ignored This doesn t work if you don t have the Adobe Reader plugin installed enabled  so I added a  Get Adobe Reader  section to the html  and a link to download the file  which usually gets completely hidden by the  lt object   gt  tag      but     In Internet Explorer  if the plugin fails to load  the empty object will still hide the  Get Adobe Reader  section  so I had to set the z-index to show it     but     Google Chrome s built-in PDF viewer also displays the  Get Adobe Reader  section on top of the PDF  so I had to do browser detection to determine whether to show the  Get Reader     This is a huge list of caveats  I believe it covers all the bases  but I am definitely not comfortable applying this to EVERY user  most of whom do not have an issue   Therefore  we decided to ONLY do this embedded option if the user opts-in for it   On our PDF page  we have a section that says  Having trouble viewing PDFs    which lets you change your setting to  embedded   and we store that setting in a cookie  In our GetPDF Action  we look for the embed true cookie   This determines whether we return the PDF file  or if we return a View of HTML with the embedded PDF   Ugh   This was even less fun than writing IE6-compatible JavaScript  I hope that others with the same problem can find comfort knowing that they re not alone

User · Answer

I had this problem   Reinstalling the latest version of Adobe Reader did nothing   Adobe Reader worked in Chrome but not in IE   This worked for me       1  Go to IE s Tools-- Compatibility View menu  2  Enter a website that has the PDF you wish to see   Click OK  3  Restart IE 4  Go to the website you entered and select the PDF  It should come up  5  Go back to Compatibility View and delete the entry you made  6  Adobe Reader works OK now in IE on all websites    It s a strange fix  but it worked for me   I needed to go through an Adobe acceptance screen after reinstall that only appeared after I did the Compatibility View trick   Once accepted  it seemed to work everywhere    Pretty flaky stuff    Hope this helps someone

User · Answer

I realize this is a rather late post but still a possible solution for the OP  I use IE9 on Win 7 and have been having Adobe Reader s grey screen issues for several months when trying to open pdf bank and credit card statements online   I could open everything in Firefox or Opera but not IE   I finally tried PDF-Viewer  set it as the default pdf viewer in its preferences and no more problems   I m sure there are other free viewers out there  like Foxit  PDF-Xchange  etc   that will give better results than Reader with less headaches   Adobe is like some of the other big companies that develop software on a take it or leave it basis     so I left it

User · Answer

Hm  would it be possible to simply do this   The first time your user opens a pdf  using Javascript you make a popout that basically says  If you cannot see your document  please click HERE   Make  HERE  a big button where it will explain to your user what s the problem  Also make another button  everything s fine   If the user clicks on this one  you remember it  so it isn t displayed in the future   I m trying to be practical  Going to great lengths trying to solve this kind of problem  properly  for a small subset of Adobe Reader versions doesn t sound very productive to me

User · Answer

We were getting this issue even after updating to the latest Adobe Reader version   Two different methods solved this issue for us    Using the free version of Foxit Reader application in place of Adobe Reader But  since most of our clients use Adobe Reader  so instead of requiring users to use Foxit Reader  we started using window open url  to open the pdf instead of window location href   url  Adobe was losing the file handle on for some reason in different iframes when the pdf was opened using the window location href method

User · Answer

I ran into this issue around the time MVC1 was first released  See Generating PDF  error with IE and HTTPS regarding the Cache-Control header

User · Answer

I don t have an exact solution  but I ll post my experiences with this in case they help anyone else   From my testing  the gray screen is only triggered on slower machines  1   To date  I have not been able to recreate it on newer hardware  2   All of my tests have been in IE8 with Adobe Reader 10 1 2  For my tests I turned off SSL and removed all headers that could have disabled caching   To recreate the gray screen  I followed the following steps   1  Navigate to a page that links to a PDF 2  Open the PDF in a new window or tab  either via the context menu or target   blank   3  In my tests  this PDF will open without error  however I have received user reports indicating failure on the first PDF load  4  Close the newly opened window or tab 5  Open the PDF  again  in a new window or tab 6  This PDF will not open  but instead only show the  gray screen  mentioned by the first user  all subsequent PDFs that are loaded will also not display -- until all browser windows are closed     I performed the above test with several different PDF files  both static and dynamic  generated from different sources and the gray screen issue always occurs when following the above steps  on the  slow  computer    To mitigate the problem in my application  I  tore down  the page that links to the PDF  removed parts piece by piece until the gray screen no longer occurred   In my particular application  built on closure-library  removing all references to goog userAgent adobeReader  3  appears to have fixed the issue  This exact solution won t work with jquery or  net MVC but maybe the process can help you isolate the source of the issue  I have not yet taken the time to isolate which particular portion of goog userAgent adobeReader triggers the bug in Adobe Reader  but it is likely that jquery might have similar plugin detection code to that used in closure-library    1  Machine experiencing gray screen  Win Server  03 SP3 AMD Sempron 2400  at 1 6GHz 256MB memory   2  Machine not experiencing gray screen  Win XP x64 SP2 AMD Athlon II X4 620 at 2 6 GHz 4GB memory   3  http   closure-library googlecode com svn docs closure goog useragent adobereader js source html

[javascript] PDF files do not open in Internet Explorer with Adobe Reader 10.0 - users get an empty gray screen. How can I fix this for my users?

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