Microsoft Edge keeps making itself the default PDF viewer instead of acrobat

Anonymous
2023-04-22T23:24:06+00:00

This is a dup thread for one that was started in 2020. Same stuff is still happening. I'm about 5 minutes from uninstalling Edge. If my PC reboots, Edge takes over PDFs. So annoying

Microsoft Edge | Read PDFs | Windows 10

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-10T21:02:51+00:00

    I had to install Adobe Acrobat Reader to view a gov't PDF. As soon as I did that, Excel would open links to local PDF files in Edge. The only fix was to uninstall Adobe Acrobat Reader. Hopefully this is useful to somebody else, considering the only support offered to me across various platforms was "change the default app" 😂

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-10T21:03:38+00:00

    I am guessing this is a problem with Adobe Acrobat Reader, not Edge. At least this was the case for me.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-10T21:20:22+00:00

    It's not a problem with Reader - it's also a problem with Acrobat Pro. And reinstalling for me turned out to be a temporary solution until Edge grabbed it again.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-03-04T11:54:18+00:00

    Hi, All,
    After some research I found this explenation:
    Microsoft has a driver (UCPD.sys & a related scheduled task) to keep selected file association to Edge.
    more info in this article:
    UserChoice Protection Driver – UCPD.sys – the kolbicz blog

    So yes MS is doing it intetionally :(

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-03-04T18:20:19+00:00

    When I had problems with MS Excel changing the default app in which hyperlinks to local PDF files open, it was caused by installing and resolved by uninstalling Adobe Acrobrat. In my case, my default app was Chrome, which was switched to Edge by Acrobrat. Somehow this was able to override my actual defaults.

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