Getting Chrome to open files instead of downloading

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

At the moment for all staff laptops chrome is downloading all files instead of opening them (e.g. PDFs etc.) Everything is getting downloaded, which means their user drives will fill quite rapidly. Is there a way to change this via the Chrome GPO?

 

Cheers

[Spence_101]

Worth trying to disable this google chrome GPO?:

 

'Always open PDF files externally'

[Ditto]

For PDFs, I don't think there is a (good) solution, well for Chrome anyway - but I'd be delighted to be told otherwise. If you on the document in drive and click 'Open with -> Apps on your computer', you might see they suggest downloading 'Backup and Sync'. I think it's a fudge solution and doesn't help much,

[AliG]

We used to open PDF’s within the chrome browser but had to turn it off due to copier print queues crashing the print spooler

[Steve21]

Are you sure you aren't blocking PDF plugins or something? It shouldn't be downloading them at all but showing them within Chrome viewer by default

 

If you change the setting you're talking about you'd force it to open in the external program e.g. Adobe etc

 

Steve

[Ditto]

There is this in my version of chrome - up to date I believe http://chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments

But what we all really want is to click on the PDF in Drive and it to load straight in to Adobe. I believe the issue with Chrome is dropped NPAPI support and it looks to me as all the workaround still result in a download so the original issue remains.

I guess a couple of options are a) look at an alternative PDF viewer if you don't like Chrome's or have a auto-cleanup of the users download area.

EDIT: Just had a play with FireFox afer reading https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/pdf-browser-plugin-configuration.html - you 'Download' the document from drive and for me it opened in Adobe DC, but doesn't seem to store a download...

[Arthur]

@sadams1980. Have you tried enabling the "Ask where to save each file before downloading" Chrome GPO?