Firefox Community Forum

Starting a couple of weeks ago I haven't been able to open PDFs in my Firefox browser. Although there are other pdf viewers, Firefox has features that I use that the others don't. I've tried all the various ideas I've found elsewhere online but none worked. I submitted a ticket to our IT helpdesk, but they say it's a Mozilla Firefox issue. The error message isn't helpful at all, considering there is no web server involved.

I get the error below:

Access to the file was denied

Firefox can’t connect to the server at local file What can you do about it?

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website’s administrator about the problem.

All pdf files show all pages blank. It affects both those newly downloaded in Firefox and those I have stored on my PC and open with Firefox. I think this started from when the latest Firefox update was installed this week. I am up to date on Widows 11.

When printing a PDF with custom page ranges, the footer text in the print preview (see image) does not match the actual page. As shown in the example image, if I want to print pages 2-16, the preview indicating page 4 is actually page 5.

So, if I want to print with a very custom range, such as 2-4, 6-10, 12-14, 16, it will be very confusing and will take longer to adjust.

And I also print custom ranges like this very often for daily tasks. I’m not sure if this is a bug or just a minor adjustment needed in Firefox’s coding. Thank you in advance for your help.

In previous versions of Firefox (up to version 133), it was possible to automatically trigger printing of a PDF file by loading it into an iframe from a sandboxed iframe and call print. However, starting with version 134, this no longer works.

Is there any other way to automatically trigger the print dialog for a PDF file in Firefox, similar to how it can be done in Chrome/Edge (e.g., by opening the PDF in a new window and directly triggering the print dialog without additional button clicks)?

Opening PDFs automatically with Firefox and, without any changes I might make, saving them with the download function in Firefox, actually ruins the functionality and data entry function of that file. Specifically this happens with PDF files downloaded from the (not all that amusing) PDFs from the FINCEN, (US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). I do not see why and how Firefox thinks it is allowed to change files that are simply downloaded and saved on Firefox.

In other words, it seems that Firefox strips away certain "permissions" and/or "functions" (like built-in lookup, menu or choice boxes). This means that the file so downloaded via Firefox can no longer be used to properly fill in data, or to look up and choose data items within the file. (I see many times that ANYTHING having to do with "permissions" tends to be an intractable and unsolvable problem for software makers & experts, so, if you do not know right away how to solve the problem, it will probably take you several years to figure this out.)

The PDF in question is created by a government agency. If you have ever dealt with a government agency, then you know that they act sort of like Adobe or Microsoft: "They don't respond, or they do respond & say they do not understand, and if they understand, they are either unwilling or unable to fix the problem."

If there is a switch or option within Firefox, which lets me tell Firefox "Save this file exactly like it is received, nothing added or removed!", that would be nice. I just have not found such an option yet, and it would be nice if it might get provided someday.

I will share my browser data, but I am sort of convinced that a detailed question like mine will not be addressed within that shared data.

I am currently revising for professional qualifications and the PDF study manual I am using is extremely large.

I have seen tutors be able to use the document outline on the left sidebar to be able to filter through different chapters.

However, I do not have that option - I only have the option to view page-by-page which is not very helpful.

How can I get the document outline to show a chapter-by-chapter outline?

Hi All,

I've set Firefox to open PDFs in the default system application (I'm on Linux, KDE, Firefox 146). With previous versions it worked fine. Now, it won't open the file; instead it shows a popup that I have to click to open the file.

Is there a setting I can tweak to get the old behavior back?

Thanks

GI

I'm viewing a pdf that seems to be made of stacked images. While viewing this pdf in firefox it has these black lines between images, as seen in attachment, these change slightly as I zoom in. These lines do not appear when viewing the pdf in brave, see other attachment.

Also, this happens both on my desktop and laptop that have very different firefox setups.

How can I fix this without fixing the pdf?

How could I even fix the pdf?

Editing a PDF is a great feature. Entering a text in Hebrew results in a PDF that, in some viewers (like your own) , the text disappears. When opening the file saved in Adobe Acrobat, it's fine.

Hi Firefox Team,

Why suddenly today there's no PDF preview for all PDF file sent or received on browser (i.e whatsapp web) Attached latest screenshots

Please assist.

Regards, Novie

Every document like the below one does not display in firefox esr 115:

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=c01081836&docLocale=en_US

I get an empty pdf viewer frame. Also the debugger shows the following error;

Uncaught TypeError: Promise.withResolvers is not a function

Is there some way to overcome this problem? a future release of firefox esr?