How do I stop Edge from opening PDF files?

Anonymous
2020-04-16T12:40:17+00:00

How do I stop Microsoft edge from opening? everytime I do the system performance check from dell it sets up Microsoft edge to open PDF files and I have my own program I use, however I cant set it as my default program.... 

* Original title: Microsoft Edge

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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Anonymous
2020-04-17T08:41:58+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

We understand your concern as you would like to change the default app for PDF file from Edge to Adobe.

In this scenario, we would suggest you to perform these methods and check.

Method 1: Change the setting for Apps

  1. Press Windows + I key to launch Windows Settings.
  2. Click on Apps and select Default apps from the left pane.
  3. Now scroll down and click on Choose default apps by file type.
  4. Scroll and look for .pdf, .pdxml, and .pdx file type, then click on the + sign to change it to Adobe Reader.

Method 2: Stop opening PDF file if you are using New Edge Chromium.

  1. Open Microsoft Edge
  2. Click on the three dots (…) from the right top corner.
  3. Select Settings from the drop down and click on Site permissions from the left pane.
  4. Scroll down and click on PDF documents, Toggle the switch to On for Always open PDF files externally.

Notes: If the Always open PDF files externally is on then if you try to open any online PDF document, it will prompt you to download and later you can use Adobe Reader to view.

Regards,

Aditya Roy

Microsoft Community – Moderator

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Anonymous
2020-08-14T08:06:25+00:00

Adobe Acrobat professional is not changing the default app.  

It was in 2018 that Windows tightened up the file association protection measures that you seem to be running into. I can't find documentation for this, but versions newer than Acrobat Pro DC 18 shouldn't be doing this. It's likely that Acrobat Pro 2017 writes to registry keys that only users are allowed to change (by using the default apps settings available).

Could it be that you're using an older version of Acrobat?

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-04-01T23:09:00+00:00

    It would be great if you could post the steps that your IT guy used.  I have tried a dozen different ways, and either it comes back or it won't let me delete the files.  Removing it from Programs and Features in the Control Panel did not seem to get rid of it, even though it looked like it had been deleted.  A search through File Manager showed that it was still there, and then later on it showed back up in Programs and Features.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-05T16:29:53+00:00

    Any advice you can share on this is appreciated. I found a guide to uninstall Edge via powershell and navigating to the "Install" directory under program files x (86) and running a command to force an uninstall. However it looks like it just reverted to the baseline version of edge instead of remove the software entirely. 

    Microsoft is useless on this, they keep saying "Change the file default bro" when that solves nothing because Edge keeps hijacking it ultimately.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-05T23:00:28+00:00

    ... running a command to force an uninstall.

    Uninstalling Edge is not the solution to this problem. For a start, it's not Edge. but Windows, that reverts the default PDF handler to Edge if an application tries to change it. Secondly, Edge will simply be re-installed by the next Windows Update. See Why can't I uninstall Microsoft Edge? 

    The solution is to find out which application is changing the default and tell it not to. Look in whichever program you're using to read PDFs for an option to set it as the default handler and turn that option off. Once you the user change the default, either via the Default apps settings pages or in an Open with ... dialogue, Windows will respect it, although a new version (e.g. 21H1 when it comes along) may start out with all the Windows defaults.

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