Why can I not change my default .pdf app to anything other than Microsoft Edge?

Anonymous
2024-04-29T11:48:46+00:00

I follow the steps (via Settings) and no change. I try to open Adobe Reader and it will not open on my PC. I see from a search that this is not a new issue and it's frustrating. This feels predatory and proprietary - forcing us to use Microsoft products. I'm thinking of stopping my personal subscription and moving to another option.

Microsoft Edge | Read PDFs | Windows 11

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
    2024-05-01T15:54:30+00:00

    Thank you very much. I was having this annoying issue and after killing the Edge process in the task manager, I just right click the PDF file, then open with, and then selected open default app. I choose the one I wanted and made sure I selected the option to open it always. After that, Windows allowed me to change the default app.

    Incredible how MS Edge is interrupting our productivity.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T16:08:24+00:00

    Why is this not the top answer... Worked a treat.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T16:18:28+00:00

    I had to kill all msEdge.exe instances from the Task Manager, and it finally let me. Using Edge 124.02478.67 64-bit.

    This did it for me. Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T16:20:00+00:00

    killing the edge instances in Task Manager did the trick... as I had already tried everything else today. Thanks!

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T17:49:34+00:00

    THIS SHOULD BE MARKED AS THE ANSWER - AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED. TWO SECONDS TO CHANGE DEAFULT APP AFTER KILLING EDGE IN TASK MANAGER.

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